Part 32 (1/2)

For a moment she seemed about to answer, but did not. Sam pulled a dozen vigorous strokes, and the boat shot into the reach opposite Kit's House.

”That,” she said, resting her eyes on the weather-stained front of Mr. Fogo's dwelling, ”is where the hermit lives, is it not? I should like to meet this man that hates all women.”

Sam essayed a gallant speech, but she paid no heed to it.

”What a charming creek that is, beyond the house! Let us row up there and wait for the others.”

The creek was wrapped in the first quiet of evening. There was still enough tide to mirror the tall trees that bent towards it, and reflect with a grey gleam one gable of the house behind. Two or three boats lay quietly here by their moorings; beside them rested a huge red buoy, and an anchor protruding one rusty tooth above the water. Where the sad-looking s.h.i.+ngle ended, a few long timbers rotted in the ooze. Nothing in this haunted corner spoke of life, unless it were the midges that danced and wheeled over the waveless tide.

”Yonder lies the lepers' burial-ground,” said Sam, and pointed.

”I have heard of them” (she s.h.i.+vered); ”and that?”

She nodded towards the saddest ruin in this sad spot, the hull of what was once a queenly schooner, now slowly rotting to annihilation beside the further sh.o.r.e. She lay helplessly canted to starboard, her head pointing up the creek. Her timbers had started, her sides were coated with green weed; her rudder, wrenched from its pintle, lay hopelessly askew. On her stern could still be read, in blistered paint, her name, ”_The Seven Sisters_ of Troy.” There she lay dismantled, with a tangle of useless rigging, not fit for saving, left to dangle from her bulwarks; and a quick fancy might liken her, as the tide left her, and the water in her hold gushed out through a dozen gaping seams, to some n.o.ble animal that had crept to this corner to bleed to death.

Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys looked towards the wreck with curious interest.

”I should like to examine it more closely,” she said.

For answer Sam pulled round the schooner, and let the boat drift under her overhanging side.

”You can climb aboard if you like,” he said, as he s.h.i.+pped the sculls and, standing up, grasped the schooner's bulwarks. ”Stop, let me make the painter fast.”

He took up the rope, swung himself aboard, and looped it round the stump of a broken davit; then bent down and gave a hand to his companion. She was agile, and the step was of no great height; but Sam had to take both her hands before she stood beside him, and ah!

but his heart beat cruelly quick.

Once on board Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys displayed the most eager inquisitiveness, almost endangering her beautiful neck as she peered down into the hole where the water lay, black and gloomy. She turned and walked aft with her feet in the scuppers, and her right hand pressed against the deck, so great was the cant on the vessel.

It was uphill walking too, for the schooner was sagged in the waist, and the stern tilted up to a considerable height. Nevertheless she reached the p.o.o.p at last. Sam followed.

”I want to see the captain's cabin,” she explained.

Sam wondered, but led the way. It was no easy matter to descend the crazy ladder, and in the cabin itself the light was so dim that he struck a match. Its flare revealed a broken table, a horsehair couch, and a row of cupboards along the walls. On the port side these had mostly fallen open, and the doors in some cases hung by a single hinge. There was a terrible smell in the place.

Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys looked around.

”Does the water ever come up here?” she asked.

Sam lit another match.

”No,” he said, stooping and examining the floor.

”You are quite sure?”

Her tone was so eager that he looked up.

”Yes, I am quite sure; but why do you ask?”

She did not answer: nor, in the faint light, could he see her face.

After a moment's silence she said, as if to herself--

”This is just the place.”

”For what?”