Part 40 (1/2)

”You remember me?” he asked.

”Of course,” answered Mrs. Hastings, with impatience in her tone.

”Where's Harry?”

The skipper spread a hard hand out, and sat down heavily.

”That,” he said, ”is what I have to tell you. He asked me to.”

”He asked you to?” questioned Agatha, and though her voice was strained there was relief in it.

Dampier made a gesture, which seemed to beseech her patience.

”Yes,” he said, ”if--anything went wrong--he told me I was to come here to Mrs. Hastings.”

Agatha turned her head away, but Mrs. Hastings saw that she caught her breath before she cried:

”Then something has gone wrong!”

”About as wrong as it could.” Dampier met her gaze gravely. ”Wyllard and two other men are drowned.”

He paused as if watching for words that might soften the dire meaning of his message, and Mrs. Hastings saw Agatha s.h.i.+ver. The girl turned slowly around with a drawn white face. It was, however, Hastings who spoke, almost sternly.

”Go on,” he said.

”I'm to tell you all?”

This time it was Agatha who broke in.

”Yes,” she replied, with a steadiness that struck the others as being strained and unnatural, ”you must tell us all.”

Dampier, who appeared to shrink from his task, began awkwardly, but he gained coherence and force of expression as he proceeded. He made them understand something of the grim resolution which had animated Wyllard.

He pictured, in terse seaman's words, the little schooner plunging to windward over long phalanxes of icy seas, or crawling white with snow through the blinding fog. His listeners saw the big combers tumbling ready to break short upon the dipping bows, and half-frozen men struggling for dear life with folds of madly thras.h.i.+ng sail. The pictures were necessarily somewhat blurred and hazy, for after all only an epic poet could fittingly describe the things that must be done and borne at sea, and epic poets are not bred in the forecastle. When he reached the last scene he gained dramatic power, and Agatha's face grew white and tense. She saw the dim figures pulling the boat through the flying spray beneath the wall of ice.

”We ran her in,” he told them, ”with the snow blinding us. It was working up for a heavy blow, and as we'd have to beat her out we couldn't take sail off her. We stood on until we heard the sea along the edge of the ice, and then there was nothing to do but jam her on the wind and thrash her clear. There was only a plank or two of the boat, an oar, and Charly's cap, when we came back again!”

”After all, though the boat was smashed, they might have gotten out,”

Hastings suggested.

”Well,” said Dampier simply, ”it didn't seem likely. The ice was sharp and ragged, and there was a long wash of sea. A man's not tough enough to stand much of that kind of hammering.”

Agatha's face grew whiter, but Dampier went on again.

”Anyway,” he said, ”they didn't turn up at the inlet as we'd fixed, and that decided the thing. If Wyllard had been alive, he surely would have been there.”

”Isn't it just possible that he might have fallen into the hands of the Russians?” asked Hastings.

”I naturally thought of that, but so far as the chart shows there isn't a settlement within leagues of the spot. Besides, supposing the Russians had got him, how could I have helped him? They'd have sent him off in the first place to one of the bigger settlements in the South, and if the authorities couldn't have connected him with any illegal sealing they'd no doubt have managed to send him across to j.a.pan by and by. In that case, he'd have gotten home without any trouble.”

Dampier paused, and it was significant that he turned to Agatha with a deprecatory gesture.