# Everybody's/'Settled Down'

Extracted from "Everybody's" magazine, v44, Feb. 1921, pp. 48–53. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
Readers of this thrilling story of adventure will share the anxious suspense that kept a whole city waiting up for news one stormy winter's night. Out in the inaccessible ice floes of Lake Michigan an injured man suffered alone on an abandoned boat while a volunteer took the one desperate chance of rescue.
“Settled Down”
By Edwin Balmer Author of “Ruth of the U. S. A.,” and (with William McHarg), “The Indian Drum.”
SOME unnamed person in a newspaper office, not considering consequences, threw down the gage thus:
“The only chance for this man lies in the revival of the will to take the extreme risk without regard to self which distinguished our war-pilots a year and a half ago. We have several brave and skilful flyers in this city. If one of them volunteers, we do not doubt that a surgeon will offer himself for this hazardous adventure.”
This paragraph of challenge appeared first in the home edition of the evening paper which reached the lake-shore suburban villages, north of Chicago, shortly before five o'clock and which were soon distributed in spite of the blizzard blowing.
Corrina Stokely read it just after she had put her baby to bed after his five-o'clock feeding. She had been very happy only the moment before, as the scales had just proved that the baby was continuing the gain of last week; he was two pounds now above his birth weight, which, the doctor said, was a proper reflection of her own complete return to health and strength. Corrina was a rather slight little thing, even with her strength regained; her clear, soft skin never showed much color, except when she flushed, which she did easily—a habit that distressed her. She was twenty-three now and her wifehood and her very recent maternity endowed her blue, gentle eyes with a happy seriousness and a sense of deep responsibility which amused, at the same time that it more wholly enslaved, her husband, Gregg.
SHE had met him in 1917 and they had fallen instantly and hopelessly in love with each other; she would have married, but Gregg had been one of those flyers who would not marry in war time. Thus, only as his betrothed, she had watched from the grounds of the Texas hotel (whither she had moved with her mother) the maneuvers and combat-drill of the biplanes seven thousand feet overhead, one of which was Gregg's. Sometimes with a glass she had been able to make out his number; and upon one of these days she had seen him fall, not to regain himself till just above the ground. Then he had gone overseas, continued there the tactics which in Texas had won him notoriety for his disregard of self and had brought Corrina, simultaneously, utter despair and utter adoration of him.
In 1919 he married her and settled down; he was as hard at business now as ever he had been at flying; he had promised her to give up flying altogether, except for the two weeks careful training in summer which the government urged to keep its pilots prepared. So far, he had kept his word.
Yet, when it was given, neither had thought of any situation such as the present arising; neither had dreamed that such a demand would be made.
“They shouldn't print a thing like that!” Corrina cried, thrusting the paper from her. “They've no right to. No one can fly and live to find any one on the lake to night!” And she went to the east window where the storm beat. Her trouble was that she knew that Gregg—if he saw this—would want to try it. “He couldn't do it. He'd just kill himself!” And in the grate she burned the paper which had come; but she knew that hundreds of thousands more were in the city; they were on every news-stand.
She went to the telephone and called the Stokely Company offices. A few minutes ago she had meant to do this to tell Gregg about the baby's gain in weight; now she did not even ask for Gregg, but for her brother, who also worked there.
“Winston? Have you seen the paper about the Andana?—I mean the part about the man Maloney. Win, I don't want Gregg to get thinking about that. He'd have to try to do something; and he can't—keep with him, as he's staying in town for dinner; I'm coming in at nine for the Ransoms' dance. I'll come as early as I can. He'll dress at the club. I want you to keep with him for me.”
In the office, Winston Leigh—a tall, sensitive man of thirty, dark like his sister, but not otherwise suggesting her—looked through a glass partition to Gregg's brown head bent intently over some important figures. At last Gregg got up, whistling, and put on his coat; he opened the door beyond and said his pleasant good night to the draftsman and came out. “Ready to call it a day, Win?”
LEIGH got into his coat and they went down in the elevator. “I see they've found the Andana, sir!” the elevator man said to Gregg; every one liked to talk to Gregg and get a word from him.
“Have they?” said Gregg. “That's good. I hadn't heard since noon. Everybody all right on board?”
“All but one man, they say, sir. Good-night, Mr. Stokely.”
“What happened to him?” Gregg was asking; but the people poured out of the car and swept him aside. “Good night, Fred.”
Gregg drifted to the door where, in spite of Win's endeavor to lead him past, he bought a paper and stood reading the headlines and subheads.
“Radio locates Andana! Lost steamer leaking and badly battered from battle with floes. Reports by wireless. Locked in the great ice-field thirty miles N.E. city. All hands safe, but one man badly injured. Ice-breaking tugs T. J. Haffron and Long John vainly attempt rescue.”
Gregg looked at his brother-in-law, his gray eyes alight. “Thirty mile off the city all the time,” he said. “What was the matter they couldn't report before?”
Leigh gladly seized the opportunity to summarize and censor the news column. “Engine-room was flooded. Gregg; it shut off the current for radio, probably; shift of ice seems to have plugged the leak; they pumped out some of the water by hand and got the fire going again.”
“How was the fellow injured?”
“OH, SEEMS they tried to send a man ashore this morning over the ice; but he reached open water about a half mile from the boat; he was lost in the snow and almost frozen before he got back.”
“You don't say! Great stuff, Win! The arctic just off Chicago and in March. Sounds like Peary's party at the pole.” He started to glance down the columns.
“That's about all, Gregg. Going to the club?”
Gregg nodded, and thrusting the paper into his pocket and turning up his collar, stepped out upon Michigan venue.
“Certainly cold!” he half shouted at his brother-in-law. “Great March weather, regular gale!”
It was very cold; and snow—the snow which that day had confused the man making for the shore from the Andana—filled the wind with fine, stinging, sand-like grains swirling into the glow of the boulevard lights from the great black void of the northeast over the roaring lake. It blew a blizzard upon Chicago; and Michigan Avenue, with its tall, abrupt blocks of buildings facing the water, of course was getting the worst of it.
Except for a few struggling figures making for the windbreak of the nearest side street, the walks were swept clear, the roadway was all but emptied of its usual crowded traffic; the city noise—motor-sounds, the swish of wheel, even the rumble of the Illinois Central trams in their sunken course in the strip of park—were completely smothered elements. Wind and water crashed and bellowed, though on the wind now a siren wailed from the direction of the harbor; short blasts of a boat whistle made reply, and the siren soughed and shrilled to a wail again.
Gregg leaned toward Winston, “The tugs!” he called.. “They're finding heavy ice packed at the mouth of the river. I guess they can't get out!”
The thrill of the combat of men, and men's creations, with the elements halted him. He put his back to the frost-shrouded show-window of a milliner's shop and stood staring lakeward through the storm. He could see nothing beyond Grant Park—not even the lights at the river mouth or the beacons on government pier. But the drama of the event, upon which all the city had been centered for many hours, seized him with doubled intensity as he stood in the storm and heard the wails of the tugs returning into the river, forced to give up the fight.
Out there within a few minutes' flight—Gregg was thinking—was a steamer beset by ice, with its crew now in constant and easy communication with a city of three millions of people, and yet thrust upon their own resources almost as absolutely as though the Andana were in the Arctic Ocean a thousand miles from land.
“Come on,” Leigh begged; and they headed against the gale north to the doors of their club, where they entered. It was too early for dinner yet, so Leigh led Gregg up to the card-room.
Neither was a frequent visitor there, but they knew most of the men gathered about the tables. Seven four-handed games were going on, with a couple at piquet over in the smokiest corner and a game of chess. About each bridge table one or two. extra men lounged, looking on or waiting to cut in at the end of a rubber. In this club only a few of them were mere card-players; most of them were business men—executives of big commercial establishments or manufacturing firms, a banker or two, lawyers, an architect and two surgeons, who had finished their operations for the day and were relaxing. Middle-aged men or over, most of them; several in their thirties; but there was only one other man, like Gregg, as young as twenty-six.
It was a group of older players—Hilton, a lawyer, Callider, a leather man, and Renwick, the surgeon, who beckoned to Gregg and Win as their fourth man left the table. Hilton cut “out” and looked on while the others sat down.
“Staying down to-night, Gregg?” said Callider, who knew the Leighs well.
“Yes,” said Gregg. “Corrina's coming in at nine for the Ransoms' dance.”
“I see. Bidding?”
“Two spades,” said Gregg.
“THREE hearts,” his brother-in-law bid. He gave Gregg a cigaret, watched him light it and settle back.
“Three spades,” Callider bid.
“Four hearts. Hearts, Doctor?” said Gregg. “Double.”
“Redouble,” said Win promptly and with satisfaction as he saw Gregg's lips tighten with the excitement of the contest; he felt he was playing for stakes far greater than ten cents a point.
Upon the leaded window behind Gregg the northeaster screamed and pelted; but Gregg was forgetting it. He set Win and Renwick four hundred and cut for Win to deal.
“I think no one will reach the Andana by water to-night,” Callider commented. “How feasible would a flight over the lake be to-night, Gregg? In this wind would it be possible at all?”
“Oh, yes, possible, Mr. Callider.”
“You have actually flown in a gale like this?”
“Not with so much snow in the wind; it wouldn't be much use; but once in a while in France, when some one was up every day for observation work anyway, we'd get a high wind. A few miles up—at ten to twelve thousand feet—you often find very strong winds; much more than this; but they don't bother you.”
“Then the snow is the reason no one goes to the Andana?”
“The snow'd certainly make any one fly blind to-night,” Gregg said. “And it would be no easy business finding the ship, even if they knew exactly where they were and could tell you. Flying in a wind, even when you can see, it's not easy to steer just where you want to go—unless the wind blows straight to or from your objective point.”
HE BENT forward and illustrated with his finger on the table-top as he saw Callider's interest. “The wind's almost always blowing at an angle to the direction you want to go; now you're flying in the wind, so you side-drift—fall off—just as fast and as far as the wind is blowing. You've got to allow for that constantly and head at a theoretical point between the spot you're aiming for and the spot the wind's blowing from. That's why, when you see an airplane in flight, it rarely is traveling actually in the way it's headed.”
“I don't see,” said Callider, “how a pilot would find anything at all over the lake to-night.”
“He'd certainly have to feel for it.”
“If he found it—the Andana, for instance—could he land safely?”
“Might save himself, but not his ship; there seems to be quite a big ice-field about the Andana. Getting down on it would depend a lot on luck. You'd have calcium lights, of course—those parachute flares you shoot and which float a minute or so to light up your landing-place at night. You might have the luck to spot a smooth place; then it might just look smooth; you'd have to expect to crash some coming down in the rough in this wind; you'd smash your 'ship.' So, even if you got there all right, you'd not be able to get up again; so what would be the use?”
“I was thinking,” Callider explained, “about what the paper was talking about—taking a doctor out there.”
“No trump, I said, Callider,” Winston interjected emphatically. “What's your bid?”
“Oh, two diamonds—that fellow's worse, they say.”
“The man who was hurt? What happened to him?” Gregg asked.
“Are we playing bridge?” Leigh insisted. “Bid, Doctor.”
“Two no trump.”
“Gregg!”
“Oh, three diamonds. What about that fellow?” Gregg asked Callider.
“He's an ex-soldier who had a head wound—the one who tried for the shore. Had a plate for part of his skull; when he fell on the ice, after he was half frozen, he seemed to knock something out of place. He's crazy with pain and they can't do anything for him. They wirelessed to send a surgeon with instruments and anesthetics on the tug. The paper called up Rowntree; he was on the Haffron."
“Did the Haffron get out?”
“No; it's back in the river. One of the boys just telephoned to the paper.”
Winston forgot to bid; Renwick did not; Callider played and Gregg, being dummy, leaned over to another table, picked up the paper and read, in the graphic lines of radio despatch, the report of the effort for the shore at the time the wireless failed and the ship seemed sinking. “Maloney left the ship at ... we found Mahoney exhausted a hundred yards from ship ... he had ... later Maloney went out of his head.”
“Mahoney, they said once!” Greg read excitedly to himself. He arose and went to the window where he vainly rubbed the pane to make out more than blackness over the lake. Except for the wind and water, nothing was to be seen outside; the walls of the beaten tugs long ago had silenced. Thirty miles away—not so far now as the great ice-floe drifted down the lake—was the floe with the frozen-in ship and the exhausted men helplessly surrounding the ex-soldier with the head wound and all unable to relieve his agony.
Winston abruptly stopped the play at the table. “Callider, didn't you see what you were doing?” he rebuked tartly. “He didn't know about that. I was trying to keep it from him.”
“From him? Why?”
“He'll want to go.”
“Gregg? Good Lord, Win, why should Gregg do it?”
“Ever know him to pass any damn fool fine thing?” Win returned, flushing with pride and fondness as he gazed at the straight, strong figure and brown head of his friend, his sister's husband. Win himself could know only vicariously the sensations which he saw were gripping his brother.
“BUT Gregg's married now and got a baby; settled down,” Callider defended himself.
“Doesn't that only make it worse if he goes?”
“He won't. It's too damn foolish; why he as much as said so himself.”
“Quick,” said Winston. “The cards we've been playing.”
“Yes; Gregg, five odd!” Callider called. “Come back here.”
Gregg dropped into his seat. “They say once that the fellow who's hurt is Mahoney; then they say Maloney.”
“What's the difference?” said Renwick.
“A fellow named Mahoney got me out of a mess once, Doctor. I got careless one day over by Vaux. It was July; our infantry were in the lines there. I went low after a sausage and got 'archied' and had to make a run for our lines; made a rotten forced landing just between the first and support trenches; crashed. Wasn't hurt much, but couldn't get out of the ship.”
“Who's a card shy?” Winston demanded.
“I'll take it. It was about noon, Doc.; clear sunshine. The Hun first-line trench was about three hundred yards off; of course they opened right away with machine guns; then the Imperial artillery took the chance for a little direct-fire stuff with 77s. Our side opened up to hit 'em under; but it didn't do a whole lot of good. Some Heinie observer got my number and began blowing my neighborhood to hell when a couple of chaps—three, to tell the truth—made a run on our support lines to help me. The machine guns drilled one of 'em right away and discouraged another; the other one—a damned long, lanky kid from Detroit and a rotten runner—came right on. They hit him too; but they couldn't discourage James Mahoney. He cut me loose and got me into one fine, deep shell hole. Pretty soon my ship blew up and burned; but I wasn't in it—No bid on this hand—Now this chap out in the lake being named Mahoney——”
“Maloney,” Winston corrected. “Besides, if he is a Mahoney what makes you think he might be the same?”
“I know he's not,” Gregg said simply. “That Mahoney went west in the shell-hole—of a head wound. I couldn't do anything at all for him. I've always wished I could— Excuse me; damn it all; excuse me; I didn't think.”
HIS brother-in-law went out of the room with him. “Come to supper, Gregg. You've got to dress and then meet Corrie.”
“Don't think I'll eat, Win, thanks.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Telephone.”
“Who to?”
“Paper.”
Win went pale. “No, you're not!”
“Win!”
“You've promised Corrie!”
“She doesn't know about this.”
“Yes, she does. She telephoned me at the office to stay with you and not let you.”
“Did she know, Win, that he's Mahoney?”
“He's not Mahoney; Maloney, Gregg; besides——”
“Oh, what's the difference? D'you suppose Mahoney asked what my name was before he started out for me?”
“That was in war, Gregg. Every one was taking chances; no one knew, anyhow, whether he'd be alive or dead the next minute. It wasn't so much to do in war.” Winston stopped and colored as his brother-in-law faced him. Winston was one of those who had not got over. “Isn't that right, Gregg?” he appealed.
Gregg stepped, unopposed, into a telephone booth and when he got the number:
"Hello, city editor? This is Gregg Stokely; do you happen to— Yes, I want to, if you can get me a ship—better have ordinary landing-gear; probably have to come down on ice—any time you're ready— I'll stay here.” He gave the club number.
“Are you going to call Corrie now, Gregg? Or shall I?”
“I'll call her,” Gregg said.
Corrina was dressing, before dinner, for the Ransoms' dance; she was in her bed-room and Gregg's—a big, pleasant, very secure-looking room where to-night, because of the violence of the blizzard beating on the east windows overlooking the lake, the grate fire blazed to help out the heat of the radiators. The fire was not necessary; but she had had it lighted to undress the baby.
It was sleeping now, quite tranquilly, in this little room of theirs. Corrina had bathed him and dressed her hair a bit high, as Gregg it, and now was in silk stockings, slippers and those soft pink, silky underthings—as Gregg called them. Her round white little arms and shoulders were bare, only the narrow ribbon straps running up.
When the telephone rang, she answered from the instrument in her dressing-room. The instant that she heard her husband's voice, she knew what he meant to do.
“Corrie, hello, dear,” he said.
“Hello, Gregg. Oh, dear, dear boy!”
“What's the matter, Corrie? You all right? Baby all right?”
“We? Of course, dear! You——”
“Dearest, I've got to fly to-night a little. You'll understand.”
“Fly? Where, Gregg? Why?”
“It'll really not be much; just to the Andana.”
“Oh Gregg—” She could not breathe for an instant. Then—“No, no! Not you.”
“Why not me?”
She did not cast upon him his promise; nor did she answer that at all. Instead:
“They're all right out there, the paper said. Aren't they still, Gregg? All but one man.”
“All but one man, Corrie,” Gregg said.
“Gregg, you can't do anything for him.”
“He needs a surgeon; he's going to get one.”
“He's dying dear. I've heard. Perhaps he's dead now.”
“No,” said Gregg. “No, dear; he's not dead. His name's Mahoney, Corrie, did you see that?”
“Yes, I knew what it would mean to you. I knew you'd want to go; you—not any one else! But you mustn't, Gregg. It's no use; it's wrong—wrong to yourself, to me, dear, to me and baby! You'll kill yourself for a sentiment. I can't let you go—I can't—can't.” She gripped with her hand tight upon the telephone instrument as though, with her physical strength, she could seize and hold him; but his voice eluded her and left her helpless.
“IT'LL be all right, Corrie; don't worry. I just wanted to tell you; don't worry. I've told the newspaper I'll go. They're getting me a ship and the surgeon. Good-by, Corrie.”
“Don't ring off! Gregg, where are you?”
“Club.”
“Talk to me; don't go. Talk to me, Gregg! I can't talk myself. I have to think—think. Hold the wire, Gregg. That's all I'll ask you; if you'll just stay there and talk to me or hold the wire while I think.”
“All right, Corrie. You want——”
She no longer heard what he said; only his voice which told her he was there while she thought—thought of him in his thick, wadded pilot's suit; and the image of him thus made her weak with panic. Thought of him mittened and hooded and goggled climbing into the seat-pit of a gale-blown airplane facing northeast somewhere in a hollow of Grant Park; thought of him opening the throttle, steering his wind-swayed ship straight into the storm, bumping at first over the frozen ground; then rising into the air and skimming out into the snowy blackness of the lake.
She was too familiar with the facts of flight to have her terrors dwell long on the flight itself. She knew his skill and believed, therefore, he would succeed in gaining the air, he would be safe for a while—if his engine was good. The gale, in flight, would not greatly endanger him; he would become a creature of the wind; for him, while in flight, the wind would cease to blow. But the night, with the snow, must blind him. She seemed to see him literally blind—sightless—beating about over the floe-filled water. The noise of the lake rushed into her ears.
The moment before, she was hearing only his voice; now, except that it did not cease, she did not hear it at all. She did not hear the wind as it beat upon her windows and battered and whistled about the house; she listened to it only as it bore to her the roar and crash of water.
For perhaps half a mile out from shore—so she had seen before the snow came—the ice hummocks stretched solid and little broken; beyond that for four miles or five or ten perhaps—as far as the eye could clearly see—were ice floes, some little, some great, the fruit of the winter broken away from the northern shores of the mighty, land-girded sea and driven down by the wind, heaped up, piled, thrust under and piled up again. From below and between them, the water ceaselessly spouted.
The water, piling up and packing together the floes, made space for itself between; and in these wild spaces, great waves arose and hurled themselves upon the floes, roaring as they assailed the ice, dashing up, washing back or overspreading and driving the ice crashing, grinding, tumbling, breaking. And she saw her husband coming down, blind in the snow-filled gale, “feeling” for the level of the lake, skimming the ice-surface and, in the momentary glare of his emergency flares, searching for space to alight.
“GREGG!” she called to him. “Gregg! You'll not throw yourself away for nothing. You'll look, Gregg, and if you find you can't come down safe—safe, Gregg, come back! You can find the shore. They'll have landing lights spread of course. Come back, oh come back to me.”
“Good night, Corrie. I knew you'd see it. Good night.”
“No; not yet, Gregg. Talk to me.”
“Good night, Corrie. They're calling me on another phone. Dear, good-night.”
He was gone; and when at last, on her call back to the city, she got connection again with the club, he had left the building. Immediately she called the newspaper. Yes, they said; they had a surgeon to make the attempt with Mr. Stokely to reach the Andana. It was Rowntree, who had tried to go on the tug Haffron. The airplane was prepared; they were to start from Grant Park as soon as possible.
Yes; of course they had her telephone number; Mr. Stokely had given it to them; they were prepared to inform her and Dr. Rowntree's sister—he was unmarried—of developments as they occurred. In all likelihood everything would be over safely in half an hour; the Andana had rockets and strong lights; the skipper would be informed when the airplane had actually started so as to send up rockets at the right time. Yes, of course, proper preparations were being made for landing, in case Mr. Stokely had to put back.
CORRINA stood stark, staring into the fire and shivering in its warmth; she went into the cool darkness of the baby's room and knelt a moment beside the small bed. When she came out, her mind was quite clear. She telephoned her father's home.
“Father, Gregg's flying to-night. Yes, he's taking a surgeon out to the Andana. No, nothing can stop him. He's in the city; perhaps he's started already. In case he has to put back, they're arranging landing lights in the city; but he may get lost; besides the Andana is supposed to be nearer here than Chicago—I want lighted landing grounds to be arranged along this shore. Walton's Field is a good place here; near the lake and smooth and hard; the wind keeps it free from drifts. We'd better have a big fire built at one end, and then down two sides, leaving a long, wide lane the direction of the wind. Father, get people to place their motor cars with bright head-lights over the landing lane. Then call some one in Glencoe who'll do it for us there; and in Lake Forest. It's the only thing we can do for Gregg now. I'll count on it and telephone the paper to tell Gregg we're doing it.”
As quickly as possible she called the paper.
“Just trying to get you, Mrs. Stokely,” the reply came. “They've started.”
“Oh!—what time, exactly, please?”
“Twenty-five minutes of eight.”
“What time have you now?” Corrina fastened on her wrist watch.
“Nineteen minutes of.”
“Thank you; can I keep the connection?”
“No; it might be some time, you see. We'll surely call you.”
Corrina arose again and stood blankly staring at the pink evening dress laid out on her bed; she picked it up, not conscious of what she did, and put it on. Twice, in the next five minutes, the telephone bell rang; the first time it was her father announcing that he had called five neighbors who each had promised to get ten cars immediately; friends further north were doing the same. The second call came from a sixteen-year-old boy in the neighborhood—Henry Wallace, who had a wireless apparatus above his father's house and who was a good curator.
“Mrs. Stokely, I've just heard Chicago flashing out to the Andana that Gregg Stokely is starting for them from the city in an airplane. Is that true?”
“Yes, Harry. Have you heard anything else since?”
“Andana replied; I've been getting stuff all day; perhaps they're talking now.”
“Go back to your instrument, Harry, I'm coming over there.”
She went down-stairs.
“Your dinner, ma'am.”
“I'll not have dinner, Jenny. I'm going to Mrs. Wallace's. Mr. Stokely flying to-night to take a surgeon out to the Andana.”
“To-night, ma'am? Mr.——”
“I wanted you to understand. Call central at once and instruct them transfer all calls, from Chicago or elsewhere to me at 297.”
She put on her fur coat and carriage-boots and heard the instructions before she opened the door. Her car was coming from the garage. The man saw her, halted, and left her at the Wallaces, on his way to Walton's Field.
Harry Wallace had his radio room on the third floor in a sort of little tower with windows north, east and south—a noisy room on such a night as this. A number of boys were gathered there and a couple of men, besides Harry's father. Mrs. Wallace had waited below for Corrina and came up with her.
Harry, who had his receivers strapped over muffled ears to make out the tiniest ticks of the wireless in the resonators on the table before him, turned about to Corinna.”
“The Andana has just sent word they're sending up rockets and have all lights lit; they're blowing their whistles too——”
“Have they seen, or heard, an airplane, Harry?”
“Not yet.”
Harry bent his head; listened and began to write: “What's that?”
THE boys about the table drew back silently and let Corrina stand closer. “We are clear and expect,” she read. Harry shook his head. “Muskegon again,” he muttered to one of his companions, and continued to listen and write while the other boy explained in a whisper.
“A wireless gets messages from all over, Mrs. Stokely; from anybody talking within radio range—That's Muskegon on the other side of the lake; they've been trying to help all the evening. The Alabama's over there and Stufflebeam's bringing her out; she's an ice-breaker, and the wind's clearing ice before ports on the Michigan side so they can get through.”
“I see; thank you,” Corrina whispering, and she read, “to reach position—Andana's—about—daylight.”
“Luddington's been talking too, just now,” said the boy. “They've offered to send a car ferry to smash through.”
“Do you hear anything from the Harry?”
“No, Mrs. Stokely.”
“What's that now?”
“A-n,” the boy wrote. “That's Chicago calling Andana. Mrs. Stokely they're asking if—Andana's seen anything. Now there's the Andana. She's saying: 'Chicago; no.'”
Corrina stared at her watch. It was four minutes after eight; and she knew that in the first rush through the storm steering by fixed reckoning, her husband had missed the Andana and he must be circling about, lost in the snow.
She gazed to the east into the blackness over the lake; turning to the south; she saw through the storm the yellow streams of many powerful lights and the red [streaks] of a beacon burning at the end of Walton's field. In the little, metal drums on the table beside her hand ticked, inaudibly to her, the chatter riding on the radio-currents of that night. Often the boy, who was receiving, wrote the messages down; sometimes he started to and gave it up, shaking his head. When he saw Corrina's alarm at this, he explained: “Interference; confused messages—from everywhere. Once in a while one drifts in from the Atlantic; once, I think, I heard a 'stray' from Honolulu; but most of it's from the lake.”
“—eighty—tons—to-morrow-night—” Corrina read the transcript of a “stray” from some unidentified ship somewhere evidently short of coal. “—see—Billings—cancel—” that “stray” skipped.
It was eight-fifteen and now a firmer, connected message came in. “Muskegon,” the operator confidently recognized the sending. “They're asking Chicago if they've heard from the airplane. That's the St. Joe now—Milwaukee was talking awhile ago; all around the lake they're watching Mr. Stokely, ma'am. There—there goes Chicago replying.”
He did not write down Chicago's reply; and Corrina did not ask what it was. The watch on her wrist showed half-past eight. Gregg had been gone almost an hour. On the silent lower floor of the house a telephone bell rang and Corrina stumbled down.
“For you, Mrs. Stokely,” the maid said. “A newspaper.”
“Just wanted to tell you, Mrs. Stokely,” the voice at the other end said, “that the plane carried fuel enough for several hours' flight.”
“You mean you've heard nothing?”
“We've been telephoning all up and down the shore and when they get back we'll know it.”
At nine o'clock the Andana inquired of Chicago, “Do you consider the airplane lost?”
A FEW minutes later Corrina went outdoors. She told Mrs. Wallace, who wanted to stay with her, that she only was going to the porch to breathe; but, when she got outside, it seemed to her that the men at Walton's field were letting the fire burn out and that some of the cars, which had been lighting the snow, were moving away. They were giving Gregg up.
She stopped a machine which was plowing through the drift. “Won't you go back, please?” she begged.
The driver recognized her. “Why, certainly, Mrs. Stokely,” he said abashed. “I said to Mr. Leigh, if we were all needed—” he realized, vaguely, that he was letting her know that her father had been abandoning hope.
“Go back and tell my father to build up that fire; get more wood and gasoline; heap it twice as high.”
They were thinking it was no use any longer; they were believing that Gregg would have reached the Andana by now or would have come back and reported himself: they were believing that her husband was dead.
The roar of the waves hurtling on the floes filled her ears and the cold cut to her hart with its chill. Furies rode on the wind which screamed in glee that Gregg Stokely was dead. No, no! she opposed all her will to it. But if he lay in the lake, what was all her will now?
Two hours before she would have acted; done something, anything; called any one to prevent him from starting. She had tried through Win, who she knew could not overcome Gregg; then she had appealed to him—and let him go. A hundred things she might have said; a score of things she might have done now occurred to her, but too late. He had gone from her; the wind had downed him, the water had drawn him in.
BUT what was that beating above the wind? A motor clatter high in air; the thresh and ceaseless drum of a propeller.
“Gregg!” she screamed, triumphant to the sky. “Oh, God, you've spared me Gregg.”
Louder, closer, so distinctly that fear of all hallucination was gone, the airplane passed; and she turned and pursued it, running with all her might to Walton Field. She heard it coming down and now, in the glow of the lights, she got a glimpse of it skimming the field and passing and going up again. Gregg would do that, she knew; he would have to take a look before landing; and while she ran, she heard him circle down wind, as he should; then again his engine sounded louder as he came into the wind; came across the lines of light glaring from both sides of the long, white lane she had arranged; his motor-clatter stopped; his wheels touched the soft snow and ran on, bounding a little and slowing.
Men ran from both sides of the lane; but she ran before them.
“Hello!” Gregg's voice called. “What's this place? Where are we?”
“Gregg! Gregg!”
“What? Corrie? You! Corrie!”
He thrust himself up with his arms pushing on both sides of his seat-pit; he got himself out and leaped to the ground where, from stiffness, he stumbled to his knees; and she caught him. Men were all about now, tugging at him; offering him whisky; others were lifting out the surgeon and carrying him to the fire.
“Hold the 'ship' headed to the wind!” Gregg asked the men; then, “Corrie, how are you here?”
Though his friends surrounded him in the glare of the lights, he seemed to recognize no one but her.
“This is home, Gregg! You've come home! This—this is Walton's Field.”
“I see.” He got to his feet and, taking a gulp from a flask, he shook off his confusion. “Then I know where we are!”
He stepped from her, stamping. She stayed by him while he walked, her hand upon him, speaking to him. Still it did not come to her, till he went over to the fire and spoke to his companion of the flight, that he had landed there only to learn where they were, before he flew again.
“Want to go on now?” he said.
“All ready.”
Then Corrina looked up at her husband and knew. “Oh, no!” she said and locked her arms about him. “Oh, no, Gregg.” And with all her physical force she held him.
She knew that easily he could overpower her; but not overpower these men who would hold him, if she begged them. He had come back from death, and by physical power she was prepared to keep him safe. But he did not try at all to overpower her; he merely looked down at her in the light of the fire and with all their friends about them.
“Suppose we'd married in the war, Corrina,” he said to her. “Imagine if we had.”
Her arms, without her willing it, loosened from about him. “I'd not have stopped you—in war!”
“It's all the same, Corrie; isn't it? War—and life?”
He turned; and now he was the one holding to her, as they walked away in the darkness and behind the cars. “Let me kiss you, Corrie.”
Her face was against his; now she flung open her coat and his hand came against the flesh of her shoulders; he stooped and kissed her throat. “All right now!” he said.
A minute later he was again over the lake.
Corrina stood at the edge of the field staring after him till the wind no longer brought the sound of the engine; then recollecting, she ran, not sparing herself till she reached Harry Wallace's radio-room.
“TELL the Andana to send up rockets again; the airplane left the shore opposite them five minutes ago.”
“I did that, Mrs. Stokely,” Harry said. “Five minutes ago.”
He stiffened suddenly to listen intently to the ticks in his receivers.
“The Andana! She—they hear an airplane—It's circling them! Coming down!”
For five minutes Corrina gripped the boy's shoulders and he never once winced; then:
“The Andana again. They say: “Airplane smashed-landing—both men unhurt—have reached ship.”
Later that night the radio carried the word that Dr. Rowntree of Chicago, who had been brought to the Andana by airplane. had performed successfully an emergency operation upon the ex-service man, Daniel Maloney. The next day the Alabama wirelessed that she had reached the position of the Andana and was standing by. Later when the storm cleared, the Alabama broke through the ice-barrier about the Andana, freed her, and brought her into port.
So on the second night Corrina and Gregg were again in their own room.
“Gregg, will you ever have to do a thing like that again?
“Will you have me—never?”
“My husband, it is become different, to think of you. Before that night, Gregg—” she spoke as though it was long ago—“we seemed so secure; you were back; we'd married; we had the baby; I thought no one could ever call on you again. We'd settled down. Then that came—out of nothing; and I knew you were going to go!—I'll never feel secure again.”
“But——”
“But—love, love you, Gregg, as never before and be happier than ever in all my life. 'Suppose we'd married in the war,' you said to me. Well, we have, dear! For to a man like you, life's just the same as war! I'll remember and try to be, dear, your good war wife.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1959, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 64 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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