Part 2 (1/2)
Though puzzled and a trifle discomposed, Lord James quietly seated himself beside the girl, and signing the men to give way, took the tiller.
”My dear Miss Leslie,” he murmured, ”if you but knew my delight over having found both you and Tom safe and well!”
”Then you really know him?” she replied. ”Yes, to be sure; he called you by your first name. Wait! I remember now. One day soon after we were cast ash.o.r.e--the second day, when we were thinking how to get fire, to drive away the leopard--”
”Leopard? I say! So that's where you got this odd gown?”
”No--the mother leopard and the cubs. I was going to say, Tom remarked that James Scarbridge had been his chum.”
”Had been? He meant _is!_”
”Then it's true! Oh, isn't it strange and--and splendid? You know, I did not connect the remark with you, Lord James. He had told me to try to think how we were to find food for the next meal. His reference to you was made quite casually in his talk with Winthrope.”
”Winthrope!” exclaimed Lord James. ”Then he, too, reached sh.o.r.e? Yet if so--”
The girl put her hand before her eyes, as if to shut out some terrible sight. Her voice sank to a whisper: ”He--he was killed in the second cyclone--a few days ago.”
”Ah!” muttered the young earl. After a pause, he asked in a tone of profound sympathy, ”And the others--Lady Bayrose?”
”Don't ask! don't ask!” she cried, shuddering and trembling.
But quickly she regained her composure and looked up at him with a calm unwavering gaze that told him how much she had undergone and the strength of character she had gained during the fearful weeks that she had been marooned on this savage and desolate coast.
”How foolish of me to give way!” she reproached herself. ”It is what you might have expected of me before--before I had been through all this, with his example to uplift me out of my helplessness and inefficiency. Believe me, Lord Avondale, I am a very different young woman from the shallow, frivolous girl you knew during those days on the Mediterranean.”
”Shallow! frivolous!” he protested. ”Anything but that, Miss Genevieve!
You must have known how vastly different were my--er--impressions. If Lady Bayrose hadn't so suddenly shunted you off at Aden to the Cape boat--Took me quite by surprise, I a.s.sure you. Had you kept on to India, I had hoped to--er--”
She gave him a glance that checked his fast-mounting ardor.
”I--I beg pardon!” he apologized. ”This of course is hardly the time--About the others, if I may ask--that is, if it's not too painful for you. I infer that Lady Bayrose--that she did not--reach the sh.o.r.e.”
The girl's thorn-scarred, sun-blistered hands clasped together almost convulsively. But she met his look of concern with unflinching braveness.
”Poor dear Lady Bayrose!” she murmured. ”They had put her and the maids into one of the boats--there at the first, when the s.h.i.+p crashed on the reef. They ran back to fetch me, but before they could rush me across, a wave more terrible than all the others swept the s.h.i.+p. It tore loose the boat and whirled them away, over and over!”
”Gad!” he exclaimed.
”It also carried away the captain and most of the crew. Between the breakers, Winthrope and Tom and I were flung into the one remaining boat. Winthrope cut the rope before the sailors could follow, and then--then the steamer slipped back off the reef and went down.”
”I say! Only the three of you left! The boat brought you safe ash.o.r.e?”
”No, we were overturned in the breakers, but were washed up--flung up--how, I cannot tell. The wind was frightful. It must have blown us out of the surf and along with the water that was being driven up and over into the lagoon. The first I knew, I was behind a little knoll with Winthrope. Tom was near--in a pool. He--he crawled out. It was nearly dark. We were all so beaten and exhausted that we slept until morning. When we awoke, there was no sign of--of any one else, or of the boat--nothing; only the top of the highest mast sticking up above the water, out beside the reef. Tom swam out to it; but he couldn't get anything--even he couldn't.”
”Swam out, you say? These waters swarm with sharks. They're keen to nip a swimmer!”
The girl's eyes flashed. ”Do you believe he'd fear them?--that he'd fear anything?”
”Not he! I fancy I ought to know, if any one. Knocked about with him, half 'round the world. I dare say he's told you.”
”Would it be like him to claim the credit of your friends.h.i.+p? No!
Before, on the steamer, we had mistaken him to be--to be what he appears to strangers--rough, almost uncouth. Yet even that frightful morning--it was among the swamps, ten miles or more up the coast. He carried us safe out of them, me nearly all the way--out of the bog and water, safe to the palms; and he as much tortured with thirst as were we!”