# The Salving of John Somers

   A long, hard fight against heavy odds; a woman’s fight for the man she loves; and, running through it all, ships and the sea, presented with John Fleming Wilson’s characteristic skill and understanding. Dramatic, tense, gripping—this story is one of Mr. Wilson’s best. It is one of a group of specially chosen sea stories that Everybody’s plans to publish in the next few months.
The Salving of John Somers
By John Fleming Wilson
FOR three long and feverish years the shipping men of the Pacific thought and planned and endeavored, with varying fortunes, nothing but the salving of vessels long cast away, or sunken, or dis mantled. Freights waited for ships that were not, the world hung on the news of obscure voyages, and riches ebbed and flowed under the hasting hands of the wreckers. The story of this may be read in the papers with all the names, the successes and the tragedies. Nowhere will you find any hint of the history told here. The daily press notes little of such events as the determined rescue of an obscure human being, and there are no quotations in any market for castaway souls haled into port for refitting. But the great fact remains that John Somers, outcast and disowned and abandoned, came back out of the southern deeps and played a man's part. He was just as truly salved by Angela Gaskell as any wrecked steamer ever was salved and put back into trade by daring and resourceful men. And the profit that Angela realized——!
Every now and then something happens to mark a man among his fellows. On a succession of blowy March days four men landed from four different steamers at Port Townsend, Astoria. Eureka and San Francisco. Each of the four turned his back on the vessel that had brought him and made his way quickly to his home. Each said to his wife, his sister, his sweetheart or his daughter: “If it hadn't been for John Somers, I'd ha' missed coming home.”
The story of the affair they referred to may be read, if you like, in any of the papers of that date. It is short, lacking in detail and commonplace, as follows:
    Eight survivors of the steam schooner Maximilian were taken off a raft on which they had spent four days without food or water yesterday forty miles west of Pt. Reyes by a boat from the steamer Fortuna. The Maximilian foundered during last week's gale while bound from Puget Sound to San Diego.
The part that John Somers played in this obscure tragedy escaped the notice of the reporters in press of bigger news. But quietly the word dribbled up and down the coast by word of mouth, among wives, sweethearts and daughters, that there was a young seaman of that name who was a hero. At one time and another inquiries were made by soft-voiced women as to his whereabouts and his welfare. But John Somers had vanished into the hustling world, a mote in its great currents. The men who had proclaimed his daring went their ways, and spoke of him no more. Only a woman here and there thrilled when she heard the name “Somers,” or grew thoughtful over some item in the news of a like tragedy. Of all who had dreamed of him, but one never forgot him.
Angela Gaskell was a pretty, well-mannered, industrious girl of seventeen when her father had come home from the wreck of the Maximilian and related over the supper-table the feats of John Somers. At eighteen she finished her business-school course and became a clerk in a shipping-office down on Battery Street in San Francisco. When she was nineteen her father (lacking a John Somers to aid) failed to return from a voyage to China and left her to fend for herself.
In the hour that her compassionate employer gave her to digest the news that had come to the Exchange, Angela grew up, turned the leaf of her old life and faced the world with fresh understanding. She went home that evening and spread her father's bed anew, brightened the flowers in the vase on the mantel, dusted her mother's picture, changed the tidies on the chairs in the sitting-room, polished her father's heavy Sunday boots and put moth-balls in his overcoat pockets.
THIS done she unlocked the tall, old-fashioned walnut “secretary” in the dim hallway and went through its contents by candlelight. At midnight she had finished. She relocked the desk, took a small assortment of papers to her bedroom, shut the door and stood in the darkness a long time, pressing her hot hands over her burning eyeballs. Presently she undressed and got into bed. Face to the pillow she murmured a new prayer:
“O God, please save John Somers!”
Out of the darkness a question formed itself: “My child, what does John Somers look like?”
Angela shut her eyes tight and tried to remember her father's clumsy description: “A tall, fairish chap with big shoulders, curly bland hair, blue eyes and a kind of drawly way of talking. When he's puzzled, he throws his head back and half closes his eyes and you see him gathering like a cat for a spring. If he has any folks, I never heard of 'em.”
With this description the Invisible was content and withdrew. Angela fell asleep.
In the morning she returned to the office and resumed her work with exactly the same air as usual. But there was new purposefulness in her movements, and her employer remarked to his partner: “That Gaskell girl is all right. I wonder, did the old man leave her anything?”
“Mighty little, I guess,” said the other. “But she won't need much. She'll marry before long.”
The senior rubbed his nose pettishly. “I hope it's not to a fresh-water scoundrel Nice fine girls like Miss Gaskell usually do.” He blinked and suddenly recalled his wandering thoughts. “Now, about that cable from Ingraham—if the Challenger wreck is worth a dollar, it's worth——”
A month later Angela Gaskell's starry eyes suddenly fixed on a name written in the middle of a letter from a New Zealand firm of shipping men. This is what it said:
    . . . No man here we feel like trusting with the job you have in mind. The best available man is Capt. John Somers. He is anxious for the berth, but can offer no references. He is, we believe, a resident of San Francisco. If you can recommend him, we would advise cabling, in which event we shall immediately engage him as master of the Challenger for t voyage to your port.
Angela reread the passage and put together the details she had gathered about the Challenger. It had been raised from a reef, towed into Auckland for refitting, and her employers had purchased it for a large sum with the intention of bringing the old vessel to San Francisco, and loading her with grain for Europe. Then her eyes rested on the scrawl notation in pencil at the foot of the page:
    Nobody knows this John Somers. Rumor that he is crooked. Must get somebody else.
She filed the letter carefully and went on with her work. That night she lay awake a long time and, in the end, whispered her perplexity into the darkness. Whatever answer came, she slept.
THE next morning her employer was surprised that Miss Gaskell did not, as usual, leave his office immediately after receiving her instructions for the day. He lowered at her.
“What is it? Want a raise?”
Angela shook her head. “Not that, Mr. Habberd. But I noticed you could find nobody that knew Captain Somers—the man Giddings, Ltd., thought might bring the Challenger here.”
Habberd's eyes brightened. “Most bothersome. You know anybody knows him? Speak quick. Got to cable to-day.”
Angela hesitated. Then she said quietly: “I know him.”
“Well?”
She gave John Somers an excellent character, while her employer studied her. At the end Mr. Habberd said “Humph!” and dismissed her. But later he summoned her and said gruffly: “Now about Captain Somers—know any one who would go his bond? One can't be too careful these days, and those Auckland chaps are evidently leary of him.”
“How much of a bond?” Angela asked.
“Five thousand dollars.”
“I—I could find out at noon,” she said, and escaped.
Several times she had been sent by her office to see bonding companies, and Angela determinedly sought out a manager whom she recalled as unusually pleasant and civil. To him she opened her business briefly. The manager asked a few questions. She answered them frankly, and he concluded by saying: “I'd like to do you a personal favor, as you have known Captain Somers so long and so well. But the rules of this business are plain and not to be evaded. The captain is in New Zealand and can't be got at. We'll only handle the bond if we are secured in full right here in San Francisco. You see, they'll ship a rich old cargo on the Challenger, and it's too risky to chance a man we don't know all about.”
“I think I know a friend of his,” Angela said slowly. “You'll take property?”
“Certainly, Miss Gaskell.”
Angela returned to her office and went to her employer. “I would like this afternoon off,” she told him. “A friend of Captain Somers is ready to go his bond and wants me to help arrange it. My—my friend saw the bonding company.”
Mr. Habberd stared and nodded. To his junior he remarked: “I hope that captain isn't the same fellow Hinkley was talking about. But the bond will cover it all. Hang these fellows who always have women friends to speak up for them!”
“I rather think Somers must be all right if Miss Gaskell——”
“Sure.”
The next night Angela did some hard figuring in her room. The next morning she dropped into a newspaper office and paid for an advertisement to rent her house. Within a week she quietly changed her address on the office-register and moved into a single room out in the Mission. After mortgaging her home and adding to the sum so obtained from her savings-account in bank, she had less than one hundred dollars left. She asked Habberd for an increase and got it with some difficulty. Her employer was in a bad temper. The Challenger had put back into port for repairs within two days after sailing for the Coast.
THE next two months were never to be forgotten by Angela. The old ship, after lying for years on an outside reef, had been but hastily refitted. She was overloaded and undermanned. It was doubtful whether she would arrive. For three weeks there had been no word of her. Then a Union Mail boat had spoken her and reported that she was making good progress. Ten days after that another steamer wirelessed up that the ship Challenger had been partially dismasted in a gale, and from that day till the day a hurrying transport from Manila had sighted her six hundred miles off the California coast, not a word came to satisfy Angela's anxieties. But on the eightieth morning Mr. Habberd came into the office with swinging step, and announced that the Challenger was inside the Heads and would be berthed that afternoon.
He dropped a word for his clerk; “Captain Somers ought to thank you personally, Miss Gaskell. And if all ends well, you'll have our thanks as well.”
With a great effort she smiled. When Habberd was gone, she stood like stone a while. What was to be done? She had risked this man's being the John Somers her father had spoken of, who had, indeed, saved her father's life. What if it were not? And how was she to explain to him, even if he were the same John Somers? What would he think of an unknown young woman's going his bond? For she had no doubt now that all her efforts to hide her own connection with the bond would be in vain.
While she stood in this dilemma the outer door opened and she looked into the blood-shot eyes and haggard face of the man she was thinking of. John Somers stood before her, swaying drunkenly on his legs, a worried smile on his full lips. His closely cropped hair was fair; he was tall, broad-shouldered and lithe. And as his eyes rested on her she saw him tilt his head back with a curious closing of the eyes, and his muscles gather themselves. The room reeked of whisky. With a cold, alert air she got her hat and coat and slipped by him and out of the office. She went home, telephoning on the way to her employer that she had been taken suddenly ill and would not return to work that week.
BUT it so happened that she was not destined to go back to that office again. The news of what had happened reached her through the cheerful gossip of another girl who had long worked under her. She settled with the bonding company and found herself reduced to an entire capital of two thousand dollars. Her house was sold. John Somers had vanished. A single gleam of light shot through her darkness: Habberd himself had proclaimed that Captain Somers was only technically at fault and that whatever might be said of his business habits, he was a first-class seaman.
In another office Angela found herself slowly regaining peace of mind. She discovered that the loss of her money was little compared to the satisfaction of not having to make any explanation to Somers. He had never inquired who was his bondsman and (indeed) pooh-poohed the whole thing as needless. It was clear that he had no sense of having betrayed a confidence. She hoped never to hear his name again.
But Fate brought him before her once more and in nobler guise. The papers announced a wreck off the Oregon coast and assigned briefly a gallant rôle to a nameless hero. Angela caught a few sentences of gossip in the Exchange while there on an errand, and knew that John Somers had proved himself fearless and self-sacrificing. She glowed. And from this time on she yielded to her passionate longing to put him where he belonged—high above his fellows, respected, honored, unsoiled.
For a few months she gained only glimpses of him, little moments in his career. His name was on the crew-list of a steam schooner bound for Hilo—signed as quartermaster on a steamer carrying lumber—scrawled on a receipt for wages off a British tramp—marked plainly after an entry in the smooth log of a schooner making the outside ports. This information she got for a price from one of the hangers-on in the custom-house. When the entries ceased, she began to lose sleep. She went so far as to visit the police courts on a chance of discovering him among the day's sweepings of the city.
It was plain that he no longer offered himself as an officer, much less as a master. He was going down steadily. Her fancy pictured him as the man she had seen staggering into Habberd's office. And always the vision changed and she caught his queer, strained pose, head tilted back, eyes half shut, muscles rippling as if for a spring. Before that image she drew back, hands pressing her eyes, nerves quivering, throat choked.
“O God,” she prayed at last, “never let him come back here.”
OUT of the invisible he stepped, as if pushed forth by grim Omnipotence, as if God answered: “You wanted him. Here he is.”
One afternoon when San Francisco's wintertime lay mistily over the Golden Gate and bright fires burned in old-fashioned offices, Angela looked up at a visitor. It was John Somers, neatly dressed, sober and shy. She was startled to know that he had no recollection of her, did not connect her in any way with his past. Then she chided herself for foolishness and asked him his business.
“I hear your people need a skipper for a steam schooner,” he said. “I want the job.”
“You have your papers—your references?” she inquired with what coldness she could assume.
“Yes, ma'am.”
“You know,” she went on, “they are so particular here. You have to be well known before they'll listen to you.”
He smiled and she realized that he was handsome. “I know that,” he murmured. “Maybe—you might say a word for me, ma'am? My papers are all right—but nobody knows me; that is, nobody to say a good word for me. I need the job.”
For the moment she stared at him. Did he know? Did he suspect her interest? She put the notion aside as absurd. The fact remained, he had asked her help. She had vowed never to refuse anything to the man who had saved, not only her father's life, but the lives of others. If he observed the flush on her cheeks, he did not attribute it to his own presence. But she knew, as women know such things, that he was enormously admiring.
“Leave your papers with me,” she said curtly. “Come back in an hour.”
He thanked her awkwardly, and handed her the little packet that contained his history as a seaman. “They're all I have,” he murmured, and departed.
She hurried after him, calling him breathlessly. He turned and she saw his head tilt back.
“Please—please don't take a drink,” she whispered.
All color ebbed from his face and he gazed at her as if fascinated. She caught his husky mutter: “My God! Does everybody know?”
“No!” she cried back, just as huskily. “Only me! I won't tell!”
At the end of the hour he came back very quietly. She greeted him coolly. “I'm afraid they won't have time to consider your application, Captain. They say they—they want a married man.”
“I'm not—don't fill the bill,” he replied gently. He raised his eyes to hers and she thrilled. “Thank you, ma'am. They all want married men these days.”
Angela took a step forward. “Don't despair,” she said sharply. “Couldn't you get a job, say, for ten days, and then come back? Often there's something turns up when they need a man in a hurry.”
Somers considered this a while. Then he nodded and went out.
It was two weeks before he came again. This time he was rather flushed with drink and she saw that he was naturally imperious. He was, however, perfectly polite.
“There is a position open at Gimbal & White's,” she told him. “They have a brand-new steamer ready for sea and they are looking for a master for her. Could you see them to-morrow?”
His eyes met hers and she saw the sadness hidden in their depths. “To-morrow? I'll try, ma'am. But I don't suppose it would do much good. A new steamer is too high for me to look, I'm afraid.”
“Try,” she murmured and turned her back.
John Somers duly presented his credentials to the firm of Gimbal & White, and found himself welcomed with unusual civility. White himself was the spokesman.
“Hang it all, Captain,” he said, “you seem to be always off on, some job or other. We tried to find you a week ago. You are just the man in our eye—deep-sea, some creditable papers, more than creditable stories about you, and as nice a woman as ever trod shoe leather ready to make a home for you. We must keep an eye on you, Captain. Will you go as mate of our Porpoise till we have a ship for you? Not a word! You have exactly two hours to get aboard, and you'll be a hundred miles to sea at midnight. Hawaiian ports.” Mr. White shook hands and dismissed him.
OUTSIDE the office John Somers stood in a daze. He tilted his head and peered into vacancy through half-shut eyes. Then he sprang into activity and sought Angela Gaskell at her place of employment. She confronted him coldly.
“I know just what you want to say,” she said. “The fact of the matter is, nobody would have you without some kind of recommendation. But it struck me as too bad you couldn't get a job.”
“But they said—they think I'm going to be married!”
“That's what I told them,” Angela returned quietly. “Aren't you?”
“But—they said—who do they think the girl is?”
“Does it matter?” she rejoined tartly. “You have the job and you'll get a better one later—if you keep straight. I'm very busy, please.”
The Porpoise sailed, and Angela went about her work without any response to the sly jokes of her fellow-workers. When she read that John Somers's steamer had arrived in Hilo she shrugged her shoulders. When it returned to San Francisco and she discovered that Somers had quit it in Honolulu she bit her lip and became only more thoughtful.
A later mail-boat brought her a letter from Somers. She read its brief message and laid it away with her other keepsakes. He wrote:
    Dear Madam:
    I couldn't come back and find that girl not waiting for me. Resp'y,
Jno. Somers.
A year later Angela got the information she had paid to obtain. It was a brief and business-like report of a discreet agency:
    The man John Somers is now running a small schooner called the Maid of Bath and trading among scattered islands to the east of the Hawaiians. He is reputed to be a morose, sullen man and his credit is poor. So far as we can ascertain, he has no white associates and keeps clear of the natives. He is not sober. The only firm that has dealings with him seems to regard him as honest but untrustworthy. He has never changed his name, so far as known. Our inquiries into his past record seem to indicate that he is well educated, and comes of a good family in an Eastern state. Our agent believes that the man Somers has no intention of returning to America, though he is decidedly taciturn and hard to get information from. He owns two-thirds of the schooner Maid of Bath, which is valued at nine thousand dollars.
WHILE she was considering this in her room of evenings, and studying both herself and her future, Angela found that a fresh problem had interjected itself. She was, in spite of herself, beloved by a man whom she liked much and respected. He had become imperious lately and he must be answered fittingly. What that answer might have been, had the occasion been propitious, Angela feared to admit to herself. As it chanced, her wooer came when she was frantic over her problems, there was high language, and she dismissed him with the flat statement that she was betrothed to another. That lie she regretted on her knees in an agony of shame.
But this ended her indecision. She faced the truth. She was forever bound to the haggard, sullen man of the Maid of Bath. Youthful and lovely she was; high-spirited and self-respecting—and she loved him. The feeling which had once been a girl's worship of a strong and debonair and careless hero had grown into a passion with roots deep in her being. He was hers. She had asked for him and God had given him to her. In the light of this tremendous fact she laughed—and threw herself into the battle before her.
At the time she kept her secret well. First, a newspaper printed the news that a marriage license had been issued to John Somers, age 34, and to Angela Gaskell, spinster, age 22. Angela herself called the attention of a reporter nosing for news to this, and unblushingly related to him the simple story of a hasty wedding in a small town outside the city. The paragraph appeared next day duly embellished by the admiring reporter, and Angela received the puzzled congratulations of her friends with calm unconcern. Then she quietly quit her position, giving the waterfront reporters a brief item about her sailing shortly for the South Seas to join her husband. Captain John Somers, of the Maid of Bath. That paragraph, she knew, would some day meet his eye. To anticipate it she fled southward.
In Honolulu she arrived quite simply as Mrs. Angela Somers and got lodgings to wait for the schooner, which was due with in a fortnight. She kept to herself strictly, spent her leisure on the beach, and eschewed making any acquaintances. But open ears could not help hearing odd gossip about the master of the Maid of Bath. In the little island life John Somers loomed large. He was handsome—and the natives could not sufficiently express their admiration for him; he was daring, skilful and reckless—men of all colors talked about his mysterious achievements.
Of all she listened to, Angela found the sidewise, idle and crooked gossip of women the hardest to endure calmly. But slowly she began to know that the man whose name she had taken was no lover of women. They thought him brutal and steely. He had given none the occasion to book his wooing. Men spoke of him jestingly as “the lady-hater.” But all the talk, such as it was, uncovered the man's glaring faults and marked him as an outcast.
On a fine morning Angela saw a dingy, wallowing vessel entering the pass and knew that the Maid of Bath had arrived. She went down to the wharf where she knew it would berth and waited. But long before the poor vessel had been made fast her heart turned to water. She saw the man she had come to claim, on his filthy deck, surrounded by pale half-castes, himself ragged, unshaven, unkempt, haggard and driven by the furies of unavailing remorse, shame and self-contempt.
When his work was done, he dismissed his crew with a wave of the hand and retired to his cabin alone. The little crowd of curious ones dispersed. The wharf became silent, the tide sent up its rank steam from among the rotting piles, and the dust of the street behind eddied over, soiled the water, coated the unpainted schooner and drifted across its cracked decks.
Catching her skirts up in one hand Angela stepped across the narrow plank and upon the deck. Then she went quietly and surely to the open door beyond which a grim, vague figure lolled, bare-chested and forbidding. She filled the aperture and the shadow moved uneasily. A dirty glass fell on the table and a bottle clinked in the rack. She entered.
BEFORE that clean vision John Somers recoiled with an oath. She saw the muscles of his throat work up and down, the nostrils twitch, the hands fumble across the trembling lips. But her voice was clear and untroubled. It was exactly as if she were speaking to a man who was buried all but his eyes; and into them she looked.
“There is time yet,” she said. “But we must sail to-night.”
He stared at her. “To-night? Where? Who are you?” He rose and leaned toward her wonderingly, repeating it, “Who are you?”
“To-night,” she said firmly. “You must unload this cargo right away. I have money. We go to-night.”
He gathered himself slowly. She saw recognition in his eyes. He became grave. He bowed.
“To-night,” she said again. “Oh, you must.” She went a step nearer and touched his great forearm timidly. “It's our only chance.”
“Our only chance?” he echoed in a loud voice. Then he turned a twisted face to her. “Your only chance? Madam, count on me. I'll get you away. Never mind the money. Get away from here for six hours, till I get my Chinese friends' stuff on the wharf and some ballast in, and my water-casks filled and some cabin stores. Trust me, ma'am. I'll get you safe away.”
She had won the first bout easily. He had, as she had hoped, taken it for granted that she was in difficulty. He had responded instantly.
But his next question gave her pause: “Maybe it's not exactly convenient for you to go back up-town? Want to stop here? No place for a lady—but you're welcome.”
The reek of the cabin stiffed her. Every sense revolted against another moment's stay in the fetid atmosphere. But she was afraid of many things. With her at hand he would not fail.
“I'd rather stay here,” she murmured.
A moment later she was alone in a fairly clean, empty cabin and a boy had been despatched for her boxes.
She saw no more of Somers till dusk. He had toiled ceaselessly; the hold had been emptied and huge boulders hoisted in for ballast. New hands had come aboard. She had listened with thumping heart to a quarter of an hour's hot argument between Somers and a Chinese merchant, but in the end the man went, grumbling away and preparations for sea went on. Just before the sun set a wagonload of stores had come down and were stowed in the lazarette. She saw that there was much liquor in cases. But at dark Somers knocked on her door.
“Any mail to go ashore, ma'am?” he asked. “The tug is alongside and we haul out in a minute.”
“Nothing,” she answered through the closed panels, and he went away.
The Maid of Bath passed out to sea unnoticed and was swallowed up in the night. When the course was set and the sails trimmed, Somers appeared, bathed, shaved and dressed in clean whites.
“Supper, ma'am,” he announced.
DURING that meal he talked easily and unconcernedly, never raising the question of the reason for her presence aboard the schooner. For a couple of hours afterward she lay in a long chair on the little quarterdeck and watched the stars.
For a week they sailed west and still no word had been spoken of their destination. Land had not been sighted. Somers went about his duties soberly and carefully, though she knew that he was drinking steadily and heavily. But he studiously avoided her except at mealtime or during the first night-watch.
On the eighth evening he said abruptly: “We sight a desert island to-morrow. A good point for a departure, ma'am. Maybe you had better tell me where you want me to take you.”
With closed eyes she lay very still and steadied her voice to answer him. “Just what kind of an island is it, Captain?”
“Nothing but a flat expanse of rock and sand, ma'am. There's a spring of water on it, a few trees and bushes and some wild goats, or wild sheep, so they say. Nobody ever lands there. It's out of the trade routes, ma'am.”
She asked a few more questions and found that it was inside a reef through which there was a single, narrow pass, difficult of navigation at all times, and impassable in bad weather. Without answering his question she went below after a brief good night.
In the morning she wakened after a few hours' uneasy sleep and went on deck. One of the four native hands was at the wheel, and the Maid of Bath was slipping along over a long swell with a light breeze distending her silent topsails. Somers was asleep in a chair by the rail.
Far to starboard Angela distinguished a low shadow against which bright glimmering seas broke. She woke him and said gently: “This is the place.”
He leaped up and apologized.
“This is the place,” she repeated firmly.
“Here? Ma'am, it's impossible. The island is absolutely barren except for a few trees and some brush and some animals. I couldn't think of it!”
“At least, land me there till I see,” she insisted.
AS ARGUMENT proved fruitless, Somers most reluctantly agreed to bring the schooner up and run for the p)ass in the reef as soon as it was light. She saw that he was strangely disturbed and his questioning glances were turned on her constantly. She waited.
The dawn came like a sudden conflagration and the sky became flame to the zenith. In all this splendor the Maid of Bath became small and diminished; the island looked miniature, surrounded by the iridescent sea. Somers changed the course and headed in where a space showed be tween the lines of leaping breakers on the reef.
For some time they slipped along soundlessly. Presently the boom of the surf rose about them. Somers took the wheel himself and conned the schooner, with two hands forward in the bows and two at the sheets. The deck began to rise and fall with greater liveliness, the blocks of the gear to thump and creak. Angela found it necessary to catch a handhold, and took her stand by Somers's side.
Suddenly it seemed as if the Maid of Bath quickened her pace. The breakers rose on either hand, the spray from their crests blowing across the deck. They foamed up the narrow channel and she saw that it swerved to the left sharply. The man beside her grasped the spokes more firmly, waiting for the moment. The hands stood at the sheets with intent eyes turned to their commander.
Somers shouted and bore down on the wheel while the men flew into activity. A great comber rose just ahead. The Maid of Bath's long jib-boom began to turn away from it, toward the new channel. And Angela threw her head low and felt Somers's huge hands grasping wildly at her, his voice thundering in her ears. She clung fast.
Suddenly his hands quit their clawing and strong arms lifted her high. The Maid of Bath struck with a terrific jar, drove deep into the reef and lay over swiftly. Angela looked up and saw a mountainous wave arching above her and was caught away and crushed against the shrouds. She felt Somers's arms tighten around her and his cheek brush hers as the water roared over them.
When this sea had passed, Somers lowered her to the tilted deck and stared keenly into her face. Then he quietly picked her up and tossed her overside into the smooth water under the lifted bows. An instant later he had joined her, and was dragging her swiftly in toward the beach. She dimly knew that others were in the sea with them, swimming to safety.
Once on the white beach Somers set her on her feet and nodded soberly. “You'll do a while, ma'am. The spring is over yonder, over that rise.”
“But you?” she choked. “Where are you going?”
He clipped his words. “Back to the schooner to save what food and stuff I can. There'll be no help for us here.”
She saw him walk rapidly back to the water, wade out and let himself go. He swam slowly and watchfully toward the wreck, now veiled in spume, a mere fragment in the breakers. The crew stood on the sand and gazed stolidly out.
At noon Somers had managed to salvage a dozen cases of food, a can of beef, a couple of barrels of flour, and the members of the crew were gathering what they might from the wreckage alongshore. Angela had in her possession her traveling bag, and one trunk was half sunk in the wet sand at the water's edge.
“Now,” Somers said crisply, when he had opened some beef and made tea in a saucepan. “Will you please explain why you wrecked us on this island? You understand, of course, that I know you planned this and knew precisely what you were about. You also understand that the chances of our being picked up within two or three years are so remote as to be worthless.”
Controlling herself with a terrible effort, which left her shaking, Angela forced herself to point to a case which Somers had brought ashore after an hour's hard work and instantly broken open.
“When that's gone we'll talk, Captain Somers.”
An ugly gleam showed in his eyes and he said nothing in reply. But three days later Angela walked from her chosen retreat among some low bushes to leeward on the island and discovered the four hands to be missing.
To her inquiries Somers returned surlily: “You insisted on this. There's no food for those kanakas, so we repaired the small boat as best we could and I sent 'em off.”
“They'll drown!”
Somers smiled. “We'll starve,” he responded.
SHE saw during the following days that this was the truth.
The island afforded no food whatever, except the flesh of a few wild sheep, could they kill them. But Angela's thoughts were little on this subject. At last she was face to face with Destiny—and John Somers. They were alone in the midst of a lonely sea, without hope of rescue; for she knew that there was small chance of the frail small boat and its crew ever arriving anywhere.
Somers himself appeared to have settled himself down to a game of patient waiting. He started the day at dawn, made a careful toilet so far as he could, cooked breakfast, called her to it, ate, cleared up after it and then proceeded to the other end of the islet where he was slowly erecting a kind of flagstaff which he formed by splicing short branches and bits of wood together.
The liquor bottles were being emptied very slowly. Angela saw that the man was by no means dependent on alcohol to sustain his spirits or to banish regret. Day by day he showed himself more capable, dignified, alert. And one day she realized that he was drinking no more out of the bottles. If she kept her sworn pact, she would never tell him what was in her heart.
It was a long month after the wreck of the Maid of Bath that Angela came to breakfast and met Somers's grave greeting with a smile. “I did you a wrong,” she said simply. “I'm sorry.”
He responded with a slight tilt of his fine head. She saw that the eyes behind the half-shut lids were clear, steady and piercing. She dropped her gaze thoughtfully.
SUDDENLY he said: “The whole affair is a mystery to me. I remember you perfectly. I saw you first when I came into Habberd's office to report the Challenger. Then I saw you in Gimbal's place and you got me that job on the Porpoise. It must have been you who put it into those fellows' heads that I was going to be married. I wrote you a letter. Probably you never got it, for I couldn't be sure of the name. Then you turn up in Honolulu and give me to understand that I must get you away before another day. I do. You wreck us on that reef and all the satisfaction I get is a most uncivil reference to a case of bottled goods. Now, what is the answer?”
Angela leaned forward earnestly and her eyes shone. “What's the answer, John Somers? Here.” She laid her white hands on her breast with a profound and significant gesture. “When I was a young girl you saved my father's life. He told me about what you did on the sinking Maximilian. You were a hero in my eyes. Then I heard your name mentioned as being in Auckland at a time when the men I worked for needed a captain. I went your bond—because you stood for all that was fine and splendid and noble. Then——”
Somers groaned. “Then you saw me.”
“Then I saw you,” she said gently. “And I wanted to help you. I've always wanted to help you. I did lie to Gimbal & White and tell them you were going to be married—I was the girl.”
“You!”
“Yes! I went home and dreamed that you quit being wicked and worthless and made good and came back—to me. Instead you disappeared. Oh!” She choked back a sob and bowed her head.
She became presently aware that he was staring at her with a new expression on his face. “The rest is written down—printed in papers—clear to the end!” she finished breathlessly, swept herself up and went to her trunk and came back with a little packet. He took it timidly, with unfeigned reluctance.
“Read it!” she stormed.
For an hour he bent over the clippings, the memoranda of the private agents, the minute details she had gleaned about his life. Then he came on the story of the marriage license, the story of the wedding, the mockingly bright last paragraph about a bride sailing to join her sailor husband. He did not look up. He sat still and silent, like an image in the white sand of that desert islet, surrounded by the desolate and gleaming sea. The faint breeze brushed his curling hair and dried the pearls of sweat that stood out in drops of agony on his brown forehead. Angela crouched apart, her eyes stony, her lips bloodless.
HE shattered the quiet. “Then,” he croaked, “you are my wife.”
She made no response.
Somers moved slightly. “When did you marry—marry me?”
“Oh!” she sobbed.
“You made a game of it,” he went on. “What a game! And you couldn't find me at the last, and so you went right on and played the game alone and said you were married to me, and took my name and came down here.” His eyes flared over her an instant. “You are young and beautiful and clean and fine. Any man might be proud. But it—it is too late!”
She rang to her feet at those sinister and ominous words. “Too late? Too late?” she cried.
“Too late,” he muttered, and glanced around as if for some place to flee.
Angela gulped. Her eyes were filled with pleading. “You despise me!”
“Not I!” he answer sharply. “I despise myself. And all this time I never dreamed that—I might have had you.”
A maddening terror seized her. She lifted herself stiffly and closed her eyes in torture. He saw the lines of agony trace themselves in her face.
“Then—there's some one else—another woman?”
Before her blind eyes Somers's lips formed a hasty “No!” but no sound came. He rose and walked quietly away, struggling with himself. His hands clenched, his muscles tightened under the terrific strain of his unworthy longing. He conquered and his voice came from his lips in a smooth drawl.
“The chief thing now is to devise some way of getting you off this island and back to civilization,” he said.
“Answer me!” she pleaded. “Is there—is there another woman—a—a wife?”
“What if there is?” he returned calmly, but his face was hot.
Angela stamped her foot. “Yes or no?”
Before he could frame a response she opened her eyes, flushing magnificently. He drew back as she confronted him. Her bosom heaved wildly and the color in her bare throat flowed upward. She spoke in such a tone as Somers had never heard before.
“What if there is?” she cried. “What of it? Who is she—compared with me? What are you to her? A hero, as you are to me? Does she know what I know? What can she give you that I can't? Can you remember her when I am before you? Or think of her when I am near? Has she loved you years—as I've loved you? Has she given you all, as I've given? Has she—has she bought you, as I have bought you, with my tears and my days and my nights and my youth and my life and my honor? Tell me, once and for all, whose are you? Hers or mine?” She held out her arms and the splendor of her eyes flamed over him. “Tell me now, John Somers! Are you mine? It's not too late—while I am here.”
She was poised as if to flee, lightly balanced (as it seemed to him) between the winds of fate. His self-vanquishment was futile. His attempt to save her from his worthless lot of mischance and misery had gone for naught. His voice broke hoarsely.
“No! Nobody else but you! There never was!” His passion abased him. His voice died in his throat. “I adore you!” he muttered, and looked away, shamefaced, humbly.
WHEN he lifted his eyes to hers, the shimmering loveliness of them blinded him. He read in their clear depths that his world had been swept away, burned up in the fire of her tremendous self-abnegation; a new world had come. In amazement he drew himself up, slowly, towering above her, imperious and masterful. And in silence they forgot the sailless sea, the barren island, the future without hope of rescue, the shattered beef casks falling to staves in the sun, the empty tins that mocked all earthly passion. Neither moved. Then Angela caught her breath in a swift sob and fled.
He found her at dusk where she crouched on a little lift of the beach, just beyond the wash of the waves. She glanced up at him with an inscrutable look, searching and profound.
“How young you are!” he whispered.
Angela laughed, low and huskily. “Young? I've loved for years and years!”
Somers bent nearer. “And are you content—to be my wife?”
She gave him no other response than an almost imperceptible faint movement.
Silently they watched the evening stars come out in the velvet sky. At the zenith a raveling of cloud reflected for an instant the last ray of the departed sun and then faded into the depths of the overarching vault. The wind sighed across the islet with a breath moist and fragrant, whispered in the bushes and died away. Their hands found each other.
“We will build our house on a hill above the Golden Gate,” he muttered, “then when I'm coming home you can stand on the porch and wave to me and our ship.”
“Our ship?” she murmured.
“Our ship,” Somers repeated firmly. “A big boy, a liner, all white decks and brass work, with our own pennant at the truck. And our house, with the plate on the step telling the peddlers to keep off. Our dog lying in the sun and our cat by the kitchen fire.” He drew a deep breath.
“When?” she whispered dreamily.
Far out at sea a spark of light kindled, threaded faintly upward, suddenly shot a cluster of stars into the sky. Somers leaped to his feet and tore off his thin jacket and held it high. He scratched a match and set fire to it. The cotton blazed up furiously a moment; and smoldering tissue floated off downwind.
“There's the cutter Polar Bear,” he said slowly. “The boys reached port and sent help. Six weeks from now we'll be home—Mr. and Mrs. John Somers.”
She crept up into his arms, and cheek to cheek they watched a second rocket soar high and break into a bright constellation above the single broken spar that marked the wreck of the Maid of Bath and the end of John Somers's casting away.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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