His Unknown Wife by Louis Tracy (little readers .TXT) 📕

After an hour’s hard work they stood on a narrow saddle overlooking a seaward precipice, and the vista before their eyes was at once awe-inspiring and disheartening. Mile after mile, nothing but broken water met the eye. The reefs were countless. In fact, the resistance they offered to the incoming tide direct from the Pacific was such that, in all likelihood, it accounted for the delay which set up the extraordinary race past Hell Gate.

Even Sturgess was upset by the far-flung chaos. A strong wind was blowing up there, and he sank his voice in the hope that his words would reach Maseden only.

“Rotten!” he said. “It would knock the stuffing out of a brass dog.”

“No secrets, please,” cried Madge promptly. “What did you say, C. K.? Are you telling Alec that there is no way out?”

“Yep,” was the disconsolate reply.

“We have not quite determined that fact yet,” said Maseden coolly. “Having done a stiff climb, suppose we get our money’s worth, and sit down? Never mind the unpleasant prospect in front. Let’s keep a sharp lookout for a log traveling in midstream, and watch it as long as possible.”

Nina, who was endowed with excellent good sight, was the first to detect a nearly submerged tree-trunk bobbing about in the channel, nearly a mile distant. The atmosphere happened, however, to be unusually clear that day, so they could follow the progress of the derelict for another mile or more. As soon as it emerged from the actual channel between the two headlands, it swung away to the left, or eastward, and kept on that course until lost in the waste of waters.

Maseden whistled in sheer vexation when he gave up the attempt to follow this floating index any longer.

“What is it now, son!” inquired Sturgess.

“The worst,” snapped the other vindictively.

“Great Scott! Didn’t you like the look of that log. I thought it lolloped along in a devil-may-care style that was rather attractive.”

“But it turned towards the land, and not towards the sea.”

“I guess that’s so.”

“And doesn’t that convey any meaning to you?”

“Sure. The tides hereabouts go all ways for Sundays. Before that thing reaches Nelson Straits it has to round the eastern end of the island opposite…. Yes, yes, Alec. You’ve wised me up on heaps of things I didn’t give a hooraw in Hades for at one time. I can tell the time by the sun, skin an eel, or a seal, or a teal, open oysters like a bar-keep, and read an eddy like a Mississippi pilot. And, to my reckoning, our boat, or any boat, has as much chance of winning through that proposition out there as a lump of butter in a fiery furnace. I never did hold very strongly by that story about Shadrack, Mesack and Abednego. I’ve a notion we haven’t got the complete facts. One day in Pittsburg—”

“Silence, please, for the passing of the next log, which happens to be a boat!”

Nina’s voice rang out clearly. She well knew the astounding significance of the words, but the daily round of hardship and adventure were molding her character on new and stronger lines. She was not, nor ever could be again, the somewhat conventional young lady who had sailed from San Juan little more than a month ago. She could face now, with an unflinching and critical eye, perils which then would have blanched her cheek and set the blood pulsing in her veins.

Even her sister, who had not made out the object to which Nina had called attention, put an alarming question quite calmly.

“A boat!” she cried. “Oh, Nina, not our boat?”

So many seemingly impossible things had occurred that the stout lifeboat they left tide securely in a small dock which was flooded by each tide might conceivably have broken loose.

“No,” came the reassuring answer. “Not our boat. It looks like one of the native coracles Alec has told us of. But it is empty. At any rate, there is no one sitting upright in it.”

By this time the others had seen the craft, which she was the first to detect. In their anxiety and excitement they stood up, one by one, as though the couple of feet thus gained would give a better view-point. There could not be the least doubt that they were looking at a roughly fashioned but distinctly seaworthy boat, which danced along on the crest of a rapid current, and whirled around, as though in sport, when some black rock thrust its obstructing fangs into the tideway. Apparently, it was traveling quite safely.

Then, as if to give them a really useful object lesson, it was caught between two rocks and turned clean over. A second somersault righted it, and, like the log, it sped away to the east.

Maseden brought back the dazed and troubled wits of his companions to the particular business in hand.

“See that you are properly roped,” he said. “We’re heading for camp, as quickly as we can get there. Don’t hurry over the first part of the descent, however. There are two bad places on the rock face.”

They reached the shore safely, unroped, and set off to walk three hard miles in record time. As they neared their refuge they saw the boat, now aground in its tiny canal. Near at hand were the white embers of their fire, which would soon be ablaze when fresh logs were added. Some washing, stretched on a line, lent a strangely domestic touch to the encampment.

But the one profoundly relieving fact was self-evident. No party of marauding Indians had swooped down on their ark and its stores. Wherever the derelict boat had come from, its occupants were not to be seen in any part of Rotunda Bay. As Maseden put it tersely:

“We found it hard enough to get here. Others seemed to have tried and failed.”

Still he and Sturgess decided to mount guard that night. The girls were not supposed to know of this new arrangement, until Maseden was about to awaken Sturgess for his second spell of sentry-go. Then Nina emerged from the rear portion of the shack.

“Lend me your watch, Alec,” she said pleasantly. “I’ll take these two hours…. No, you mustn’t argue, there’s a dear-fellow-” the concluding word was added rather hurriedly, being an obvious afterthought. “I’ll call Madge next, and it will be broad daylight by the time her spell is ended.”

“I’m not sleepy,” he murmured, sinking his voice so as not to disturb the others. “I was only going to rouse C. K. because he will be annoyed if I don’t stick to schedule.”

“I haven’t slept at all,” the girl confessed. “If you’re not going to rest, let us talk. Or, perhaps, that is not quite the right thing to do.”

“Not if there was any real fear of an attack,” said Maseden, leading her to the small sand hillock near the boat. “I am convinced we are safe enough, but I should never forgive myself if the camp were rushed owing to our negligence…. Sit here. The tide is rising. We can distinguish the water-line, and remain unseen ourselves. Of course, we should speak hardly above a whisper.”

Some inequality in the sloping surface brought them rather close together when they sat down. Nina moved, with a little laugh of apology. Her action was quite involuntary, but it nettled Maseden.

“I don’t want to flirt with you, if that is what you are afraid of,” he grunted. “In present conditions spooning would be rather absurd. Not that my particular sort of marriage tie would restrain me. Don’t think it. Enforced obedience of that sort is foreign to my nature.”

“I gather that you really want to quarrel with me,” was the glib answer.

Of course, any woman of average wit could have put a man in the wrong at once with equal readiness though given a far less vulnerable opening, but Maseden realized his blunder and drew back.

“A too strenuous life seems to have spoiled my temper,” he said. “I used to be regarded as a somewhat easy-going person.”

“Probably that was because you had things all your own way.”

“You may be right. A man is the poorest judge of his own virtues or faults. For instance, I have always prided myself on a certain quality of quick decision, once my mind was made up. But of late I find myself lacking even in that respect.”

“Isn’t it possible you are not actually sure of your own mind?”

“Shall I submit the case to you?”

“Would that be wise? I would remind you of your own phrase-in present conditions.”

“But I think you ought to know,” he persisted. “Weeks ago, on the day you shot the sealion, in fact, C. K. told me he meant to marry Madge, if the lady is willing, that is. The statement startled me, to put it mildly. I rather scoffed at it, which nettled him, naturally. I was on the point of acquainting him with the facts, but was stopped by the gunshot. Since then he has never mentioned the matter again, and I have been averse from pulling it in by the scruff of the neck-”

“Why do so now?” put in the girl quickly.

He could not see her face, but the note of alarm in her voice was not even disguised.

“Because, day by day, I see more and more clearly that our friend’s love of your sister is a very real thing. I see, too, or think that I see, a response on her part. From a common sense point of view, what else could one expect? Two young people, each eminently agreeable, are thrown together by fate in circumstances of great and continuous personal danger. The artificial intercourse of civilized life is impossible from the outset. They see each other as they really are. Each has to depend on real characteristics, not on shams. Can one imagine a more ideal method of choosing one’s future partner than those in which we have lived during the past month?”

This was what lawyers call a leading question, and Nina shied at it instantly.

“Everything you have said may be true, Alec,” she said, “but you have advanced no reason whatever for disturbing our pleasant relations. Surely all these problems may be allowed to settle themselves when, if ever, we re-enter the everyday world?”

“That is just my difficulty,” continued Maseden doggedly; he was resolved now to have an irritating hindrance to pleasant relations settled once and for all. “Is it fair to Sturgess to let him believe there is no bar to his wooing? Of course, my marriage was a farce, and can be dismissed as such. But what will C. K. think, what will he say, when he hears of it? Won’t our silence-yes, our silence-you cannot shirk a part of the responsibility-be open to misinterpretation? May it not bring about the very catastrophe we want to avoid?”

“I really don’t understand,” said the girl in a frightened way.

“Then I must make my meaning clear, even though it hurts,” he said determinedly. “If I tell Sturgess now about the Cartagena ceremony, though rather late in the day, it is not too late; whereas, if I wait till we reach New York, how astounded and mystified he will be by the legal process which I must set on foot to secure your sister’s freedom and my own! Why, the result might be tragic. If C. K. knows now, he can, if he chooses, seek from Madge an explanation of the whole mad business. She may give or withhold it-that is for her to decide. But at least we shall all be acting squarely and above-board. I put it to you strongly, for the