CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE LONE SURVIVOR
SLEEP lay heavy and sweet upon Dick Colton that night. Not even the excitement of the prospective man-hunt—for the juggler was to be rounded up on the morrow—could overcome his healthy weariness. The intense and tragic events amid which his life had moved for a fortnight had been a cure for his insomnia as effectual as unexpected. Now when he slept, he slept; great guns could not wake him. In fact, at this particular midnight of September’s last day great guns did not wake him, for the intermittent booming of cannonade for some fifteen minutes had left his happy dreams undisturbed.
Not so with the others. Helga was stirring below; the Ravendens were moving about in their respective rooms. Everard was delivering a passionate rhapsody to an elusive match-box, and Mrs. Johnston was addressing the familiar argument regarding the preventive merits of rubber boots to her exasperated husband. Into the submerged consciousness of Dick Colton drifted scraps and fragments of eager talk. “Wreck ashore.... Graveyard Point again.... Won’t need the lanterns.... Drat the rubber boots!... All go together.” Then said the wizard of dreams, who mismanages such things, to Dick Colton: “It was all a phantasy, the imaginings of a moment. The crowded wonders in which you have taken part never happened. There have been no murders; there has been no juggler, no kite-flyer, no mystery. Haynes is alive; you can hear him moving about. You are back where you belong, at the night of the shipwreck, and I have befooled you well with an empty panorama.”
“And Dolly?” cried the unhappy dreamer in such a pang of protest that he came broad awake at once. The wizard fled.
From below, the magic of Helga’s voice rang out, sounding once more, as he had not heard it since Haynes’ death, the vital ring of unconquerable youth, but with a new and deeper undertone.
“Oh-ho! Yo-ho-ho, Everard! Come down! There’s a wreck ashore!”
And the quick answer: “All right! Be with you in a minute.”
Once more Dick’s mind swung back. All was so exactly parallel to the first night he had spent there. But the next instant he was plunging into what garments came readiest to hand. Out into the hall he bolted and came upon Dolly Ravenden and her father so sharply that for a moment his conscience was in abeyance; then, stricken with the recollection of his moment’s madness, he turned away to Everard’s door and caught that impulsive youth’s charge full in the chest.
“You up, Dicky?” cried the younger brother. “And Dolly, too! We’ll have a wreck party?”
“I wouldn’t take it too much as an entertainment, Ev,” said his brother quietly.