Charlotte took time only to groan as she bent over Kingsnorth, wrapping a piece of cloth torn from her petticoat about his wounded forehead, trying to pad the torn and bleeding breast. Blood and froth stood upon his lips and at times convulsions of coughing seized him, and more froth and blood were expelled.
“It is worse than disabled,” said Charlotte slowly after what examination she could make. “I think the lung has been penetrated. I am afraid he is dying.” Mrs. Maclaughlin pressed her lips together, but said nothing.
When Charlotte had done what she could, she sat down and took the wounded man’s head in her lap. The fire, which had blazed up so valiantly, died out as it reached the wet roof, and another pattering shower extinguished it. The night closed about them again in impenetrable darkness. Only once, as the clouds drove past, a rift showed for an instant, and a star beamed down upon them as if reminding them that the world of former days was still there. Little by little, the wind moderated, the showers ceased, and the wild harmonies of the sea subsided into a long rhythmic booming of surf. In spite of its violence, the wind was soft and warm as velvet, and though they were damp, chilled, and uncomfortable, what they had undergone could not have been called suffering.
Chapter XVIII
The mental suffering was, however, far from small. As she strained her eyes through the blackness, Charlotte felt that the weight of ages lay on their aching pupils. Fatigue, despair, and fear all tore at her heart. There rose always before her the vision of Martin as she had imagined him in the little coastguard steamer’s cabin, and the cold dread clenched her heart that the waves had sucked him down and down to the bottomless sea, a lonely, dead thing in the awful vastness of it. Once only she spoke to Mrs. Maclaughlin.
“Do you think it can be near morning?” she asked; and Mrs. Maclaughlin negatived the idea sharply.
“It was about midnight when we cleared out,” she said, “and time goes slowly in fixes like this.
It went infinitely worse than slowly. When, at last, the blackness became a gloom filled with shapes, and a pallor showed in the east, the two women, their hair in disorder, their faces drawn and haggard, had hardly courage to look about them. Broad daylight revealed a scene of desolation, with the sea running furiously against the strewn beach, and with the cocoanut grove a ragged waste, its snapped boles standing upright and the long plumy tops dragging on the ground. Kingsnorth’s charred structure, their own homes sprawling drunkenly, and the distant village in ruins, presented a picture, which, to minds less engrossed with even more heartrending possibilities, would have meant despair.
With the first clear light, Mrs. Maclaughlin hunted up her basket of food and some water bottles which she had deposited at the side of the path, and each woman made a pretence of swallowing a few tinned biscuit, and eased her parched throat with drink. Charlotte moistened Kingsnorth’s lips, but he seemed unable to swallow. After awhile, however, he opened his eyes, and she perceived that he was conscious.