Part 24 (1/2)

So for some moments he stood, clinging upon the p.o.o.p, awaiting the end.

But the end came slowly. The _Solon_ was a stoutly timbered s.h.i.+p. Much of her lading had been cast overboard, but more remained and gave buoyancy to the wreckage. And as the Athenian awaited, almost impatiently, the final disaster, something called his eye away from the heaving sky-line. Human life was still about him. Wedged in a refuge, betwixt two capstans, the Orientals were sitting, awaiting doom like himself. But wonder of wonders,-he had not relaxed his hold on life too much to marvel,-the younger Barbarian was beyond all doubt a woman. She sat in her companion's lap, lifting her white face to his, and Glaucon knew she was of wondrous beauty. They were talking together in some Eastern speech. Their arms were closely twined. It was plain they were pa.s.sing the last love messages before entering the great mystery together. Of Glaucon they took no heed.

And he at first was almost angered that strangers should intrude upon this last hour of life. But as he looked, as he saw the beauty of the woman, the sheen of her golden hair, the interchange of love by touch and word,-there came across his own spirit a most unlooked-for change.

Suddenly the white-capped billows seemed pitiless and chill. The warm joy of life returned. Again memory surged back, but without its former pang.

He saw again the vision of Athens, of Colonus, of Eleusis-by-the-Sea. He saw Hermione running through the throng to meet him the day he returned from the Isthmia. He heard the sweet wind singing over the old olives beside the cool Cephissus. Must these all pa.s.s forever? forever? Were life, friends, love, the light of the sun, eternally lost, and nothing left save the endless sleep in the unsunned caves of Ocea.n.u.s? With one surge the desire to live, to bear hard things, to conquer them, returned.

He dashed the water from his eyes. What he did next was more by instinct than by reason. He staggered across the reeling deck, approached the Barbarians, and seized the man by the arm.

”Would you live and not die? Up, then,-there is still a chance.”

The man gazed up blankly.

”We are in Mazda's hands,” he answered in foreign accent. ”It is manifestly his will that we should pa.s.s now the Chinvat bridge. We are helpless. Where is the pinnace?”

Glaucon dragged him roughly to his feet.

”I do not know your G.o.ds. Do not speak of their will to destroy us till the destruction falls. Do you love this woman?”

”Save her, let me twice perish.”

”Rouse yourself, then. One hope is left!”

”What hope?”

”A raft. We can cast a spar overboard. It will float us. You look strong,-aid me.”

The man rose and, thoroughly aroused, seconded the Athenian intelligently and promptly. The lurches of the merchantman told how close she was to her end. One of the seamen's axes lay on the p.o.o.p. Glaucon seized it. The foremast was gone and the mainmast, but the small boat-mast still stood, though its sail had blown to a thousand flapping streamers. Glaucon laid his axe at the foot of the spar. Two fierce strokes weakened so that the next lurch sent it cras.h.i.+ng overboard. It swung in the maelstrom by its stays and the halyards of the sail. Tossing to and fro like a bubble, it was a fearful hope, but a louder rumbling from the hold warned how other hope had fled. The Barbarian recoiled as he looked on it.

”It can never float through this storm,” Glaucon heard him crying between the blasts, but the Athenian beckoned him onward.

”Leap!” commanded Glaucon; ”spring as the mast rises on the next wave.”

”I cannot forsake her,” called back the man, pointing to the woman, who lay with flying hair between the capstans, helpless and piteous now that her lover was no longer near.

”I will provide for her. Leap!”

Glaucon lifted the woman in his arms. He took a manner of pride in showing the Barbarian his skill. The man looked at him once, saw he could be trusted, and took the leap. He landed in the water, but caught the sail-cloth drifting from the mast, climbed beside it, and sat astride. The Athenian sprang at the next favoring wave. His burden made the task hard, but his stadium training never stood in better stead. The cold water closed around him. The wave dragged down in its black abyss, but he struck boldly upward, was beside the friendly spar, and the Barbarian aided him to mount beside him, then cut the las.h.i.+ngs to the _Solon_ with the dagger that still dangled at his belt. The billows swept them away just as the wreck reared wildly, and bow foremost plunged into the deep. They bound the woman-she was hardly conscious now-into the little shelter formed by the junction of the broken sail-yard and the mast. The two men sat beside her, s.h.i.+elding her with their bodies from the beat of the spray. Speech was all but impossible. They were fain to close their eyes and pray to be delivered from the unceasing screaming of the wind, the howling of the waters. And so for hours....

Glaucon never knew how long they thus drifted. The _Solon_ had been smitten very early in the morning. She had foundered perhaps at noon. It may have been shortly before sunset-though Helios never pierced the clouds that storm-racked day-when Glaucon knew that the Barbarian was speaking to him.

”Look!” The wind had lulled a little; the man could make himself heard.

”What is it?”

Through the ma.s.ses of gray spray and driving mist Glaucon gazed when the next long wave tossed them. A glimpse,-but the joys of Olympus seemed given with that sight; wind-swept, wave-beaten, rock-bound, that half-seen ridge of brown was land,-and land meant life, the life he had longed to fling away in the morning, the life he longed to keep that night. He shouted the discovery to his companion, who bowed his head, manifestly in prayer.

The wind bore them rapidly. Glaucon, who knew the isles of the aegean as became a h.e.l.lene, was certain they drove on Astypalaea, an isle subject to Persia, though one of the outermost Cyclades. The woman was in no state to realize their crisis. Only a hand laid on her bosom told that her heart still fluttered. She could not endure the surge and the suffocating spray much longer. The two men sat in silence, but their eyes went out hungrily toward the stretch of brown as it lifted above the wave crests. The last moments of the desperate voyage crept by like the pangs of Tantalus.

Slowly they saw unfolding the fog-clothed mountains, a forest, scattered bits of white they knew were stuccoed houses; but while their eyes brought joy, their ears brought sadness. The booming of the surf upon an outlying ledge grew ever clearer. Almost ere they knew it the drifting mast was stayed with a shock. They saw two rocks swathed in dripping weed that crusted with knife-like barnacles, thrust their black heads out of the boiling water. And beyond-fifty paces away-the breakers raced up the sandy sh.o.r.e where waited refuge.