The shadow of the Wolf

by R. Austin Freeman

He passed the length of rope that he had cut off twice round Purcell’s body, hauled it tight and secured it with a knot. Then he made the ends fast to the handle of the iron weight.

Not much fear of Purcell drifting ashore now! That weight would hold him as long as there was anything to hold. But it had taken some time to do, and the warning bellow from the Wolf seemed to draw nearer and nearer. He was about to heave the body over when his eye fell on the dead man’s sou’wester, which had fallen off when the body rolled over. That hat must be got rid of, for Purcell’s name was worked in silk on the lining and there was an unmistakable bullet-hole through the back. It must be destroyed; or, which would be simpler and quicker, lashed securely on the dead man’s head.

Hurriedly, Varney ran aft and descended to the cabin. He had noticed a new ball of spun yarn in the locker when he had fetched the rope. This would be the very thing.

He was back again in a few moments with the ball in his hand, unwinding it as he came, and, without wasting time, he knelt down by the body and fell to work. There was a curious absence of repugnance in his manner, horrible as his task would have seemed. He had to raise the dead man’s head to fit on the hat, and in so doing covered his left hand with blood. But he appeared to mind no more than if he had been handling a seal that he had shot or a large and dirty fish. Quite composedly, and with that neatness in the handling of cordage that marks the sailor-man, whether amateur or professional, he proceeded with his task, intent only on making the lashing secure and getting it done quickly.

And every half-minute the deep-voiced growl of the Wolf came to him out of the fog, and each time it sounded nearer and yet nearer.

By the time he had made the sou’wester secure the dead man’s face and chin were encaged in a web of spun-yard that made him look like some old-time, grotesque-vizored Samurai warrior. But the hat was now immoveable. Long after that burly corpse had dwindled to a mere skeleton, it would hold; would still cling to the dead head when the face that looked through the lacing of cords was the face of a bare and grinning skull.

Varney rose to his feet. But his task was not finished yet. There was Purcell’s suit-case. That must be sunk, too; and there was something in it that had figured in the detailed picture that his imagination had drawn. He ran to the cockpit, where the suit-case lay, and having tried its fastenings and found it unlocked, he opened it and took out with his right hand—the clean one—a letter that lay on top of the other contents. This he tossed through the hatch into the cabin. Then his eye caught, Purcell’s fountain pen, slipped neatly through a loop in the lid. It was filled, he knew, with the peculiar black ink that Purcell always used. The thought passed swiftly through his mind that perchance it might be of use to him. In a moment he had drawn it from its loop and slipped it into his pocket. Then, having closed and fastened the suit-case, he carried it forward and made it fast to the iron weight with a half-dozen turns of spun yarn.

That was really all; and indeed it was time. As he rose once more to his feet the growl of the fog-horn burst out, as it seemed right over the stern of the yacht; and she was drifting stern-foremost who could say how fast. Now, too, he caught a more ominous sound, which he might have heard sooner had he listened: the wash of water, the boom of breakers bursting on a rock.

A sudden revulsion came over him. He burst into a wild, sardonic laugh. And had it come to this, after all? Had he schemed and laboured only to leave himself alone on an unmanageable craft drifting down to shipwreck and certain death? Had he taken all this thought and care to secure Purcell’s body, when his own might be resting beside it on the sea bottom within an hour?

But his reverie was brief. Suddenly, from the white void over his very head, as it seemed, there issued a stunning, thunderous roar that shook the very deck under his feet. The water around him boiled into a foamy chaos; the din of bursting waves was in his ears; the yacht plunged and wallowed amidst clouds of spray; and, for an instant a dim, gigantic shadow loomed through the fog and was gone.