{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_60811/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_60811","id":"gutenberg_60811","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60811","summary":null,"tags":["American fiction","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Short Stories","Man-woman relationships -- Fiction","Sea stories, American","Short stories, American","Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction"],"text":"Transcriber's Notes:\n\n  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal\n  signs=.\n\n  Small uppercase have been replaced with regular uppercase.\n\n  Blank pages have been eliminated.\n\n  Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the\n  original.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration:\n\n                                          See page 223\n\n  \"HOME ALONG THE BEACH FOR THE SECOND TIME\"]\n\n\n\n\n                            IN GREAT WATERS\n\n                             Four Stories\n\n\n                                  By\n\n                           THOMAS A. JANVIER\n\n\n                               Author of\n\n          \"The Uncle of an Angel\" \"The Aztec Treasure-House\"\n            \"The Passing of Thomas\" \"In Old New York\" etc.\n\n\n                             _ILLUSTRATED_\n\n                            [Illustration]\n\n\n                          NEW YORK AND LONDON\n                     HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS\n                                 1901\n\n\n\n\n                Copyright, 1901, by HARPER & BROTHERS.\n\n                        _All rights reserved._\n                            November, 1901.\n\n\n\n\n                                  TO\n\n                               C. A. J.\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\n\n                                                  PAGE\n\n  THE WRATH OF THE ZUYDER ZEE                        3\n\n  A DULUTH TRAGEDY                                  65\n\n  THE DEATH-FIRES OF LES MARTIGUES                 135\n\n  A SEA UPCAST                                     171\n\n\n\n\nIllustrations\n\n\n  \"HOME ALONG THE BEACH FOR THE SECOND TIME\"           _Frontispiece_\n\n  \"HE WAS A CRAZED MAN\"                            _Facing p._      6\n\n  \"IT WAS A STATELY DWELLING\"                           \"          24\n\n  OLD JAAP                                              \"          56\n\n  \"'I HAVE LOVED YOU WITH MY WHOLE HEART'\"              \"         126\n\n  MARIUS                                                \"         136\n\n  \"THE OTHERS WERE UPCAST ON THE ROCKS\"                 \"         166\n\n  \"THEN I COULD USE MY EYES TO LOOK BEHIND ME\"          \"         220\n\n\n\n\nThe Wrath of the Zuyder Zee\n\n\nI\n\nOld Jaap Visser was mad. Out there on the island of Marken, in the\nZuyder Zee, he was the one madman, and a curiosity. The little\nboys--all born web-footed, and eager as soon as they could walk to\ntoddle off on their stout little Dutch legs and take to the water--used\nto run after him and jeer at him. An underlying fear gave zest to\nthis amusement. The older of them knew that he could lay a strange\nbinding curse upon people. The younger of them, resolving this concept\ninto simpler terms, knew that he could say something that would\nhurt more than a spanking; and that would keep on hurting, in some\nunexplained but dreadful way, beyond the sting of the worst spanking\nthat ever they had known. Therefore, while they jeered, they jeered\ncircumspectly. Out in the open--on the brick-paved pathways which\ntraverse the low marsh-land and unite the little knolls on which are\nthe villages: the Hafenbeurt (where the harbour is), the Kerkehof, and\nthe Kesbeurt--butter would not melt in their small Dutch mouths when\nthey met him. But when they had him at their mercy among the houses\nof one or another of the villages things went differently. Then they\nwould yell \"Old Jaap!\" \"Mad old Jaap!\" after him--and as he turned upon\nthem would whip off their sabots, that they might run the more lightly,\nand would dash around corners into safety: with delightful thrills of\ndread running through their small scampish bodies at the thought of the\ncurse that certainly was flying after them, and that certainly would\nmake them no better than dead jelly-fish if they did not get around the\ncorner in time to ward it off! And old Jaap would be left free for a\nmoment from his tormentors, brandishing his staff in angry flourishes\nand shouting his strange curse after them: \"May you perish in the wrath\nof the Zuyder Zee!\"\n\nThe young men and women of Marken, who never had known old Jaap save\nas a madman, felt toward him much as the children did; though as\nthey got older, and came to understand the cause of his madness and\nthe effectiveness of his curse, their dread of him was apt to take\non a more serious cast. Even Krelis Kess, a notorious daredevil in\nall other directions, and for a long while one of old Jaap's most\npersistent tormentors, came in the end to treat him with a very\nobliging civility. But then, to be sure, Marretje de Witt was old\nJaap's granddaughter--and everybody in Marken knew that this gentle\nMarretje, because of her very unlikeness to him it was supposed, had\nmade capture of Krelis Kess's much too vagrant heart. One person, it\nis true, did dissent from this view of the matter, and that was Geert\nThysen--who declared that Krelis was too much of a man really to care\nfor a pale-faced thing fit only to marry another oyster like herself.\nAnd Geert's black eyes would snap, and her strong white teeth would\nshow in a smile that was not a pleasant one as she added: \"A live man\nwho knows the nip of gin-and-water does not waste his time in drinking\nweak tea!\" But then, to quote the sense of the island folk again,\neverybody in Marken knew that to win Krelis's love for herself Geert\nThysen would have given those bold black eyes of hers, and would have\nsaid thank you, too!\n\nAmong the old people of Marken, who had known old Jaap before his\nmadness came upon him, a very different feeling prevailed. They dreaded\nhim, of course, because they knew what his curse could accomplish; but,\nalso, they sorrowed for him--remembering the cruel grief which had come\nupon him in his youth suddenly and had driven him mad. Well enough,\nthey said, might he call down his strange curse upon those who angered\nhim, for twice had he known the bitterness of it: when death, and again\nworse than death, had struck at that which was dearer than the very\nheart of him through the wrath of the Zuyder Zee.\n\nIt all had happened so long back that only the old people had knowledge\nof it--in the great storm out of the Arctic Ocean which had driven into\nthe Zuyder Zee the North Sea waters; and there had banked them up,\nhigher and higher, until the whole island of Marken was flooded and\nhalf the dykes of the mainland were overrun. Old Jaap--who was young\nJaap, then--was afloat at his fishing when the storm came on, and his\nyoung wife and her baby were alone at home. In her fear for him she\ncame down from the Kerkehof, where their home was, to the Hafenbeurt;\nand there, standing upon the sea-wall that shelters the little harbour,\nwatching for him, was the last that ever was seen of her alive. When\nhis schuyt came in she had vanished--caught away by the up-leaping sea.\nThat was bad enough, but worse followed. A month later, when he was\nat his fishing again--glad to be at work, that in the stress of it he\nmight a little forget his sorrow--his net came up heavy, and in it was\nhis dead wife.\n\n[Illustration: \"HE WAS A CRAZED MAN\"]\n\nThen it was that his madness fell upon him. By the time that he was\ncome back to Marken--sailing his schuyt for a long night through the\ndark waters with that grewsomely ghastly lading--he was a crazed man.\n\n\nII\n\nThe shadow that rested on Jaap Visser's mind was a deep melancholy that\nfor the most part kept him silent, yet that was broken now and then by\noutbursts of rage in which he raved against the cruel wickedness of the\nsea. It did not unfit him for work. He had his living to make; and he\nmade it, as all the men of Marken made their living, by fishing. But\nthose who sailed with him in his schuyt said that always as the net\ncame home he hauled upon it with tight-shut eyes; that always, as it\nwas drawn inboard, he turned away--until the thrashing of the fish and\nsome word about the catch from his companions assured him that he might\nlook without fear of such a sight as that which had flashed burning\nthrough his eyes and had turned his brain.\n\nWhen he was on land he spent little time in his own home: of which, and\nof the baby motherless, his mother had taken charge. Usually he was to\nbe found within or lingering near the graveyard that lies between the\nKerkehof and the Hafenbeurt: an artificial mound, like those whereon\nthe several villages on the island are built, raised high enough\nto be above the level of the waters which cover Marken in times of\ngreat storm. Before this strange habit of his had become a matter of\nnotoriety, a dozen or more of the islanders, as they passed at night\nalong the path beside the graveyard, had been frightened pretty well\nout of their wits by seeing his tall figure rise from among the graves\nsuddenly and stand sharply outlined against the star-gleam of the sky.\n\nBut in those days, as I have said, his madness was no more than a\nsombre melancholy--save for his fitful outbursts of rage against the\nsea. The bitterness that came into his heart came later: when his\ndaughter was a woman grown and Jan de Witt married her--and presently\ndeserted her, as was known openly, for an Edam jade over on the\nmainland. Things went worse and worse for a while: until one day when\nold Jaap--even then they were beginning to call him old Jaap--fell into\na burning rage with his son-in-law and cursed him as he deserved for\nthe scoundrel that he was.\n\nIt was down at the dock that the two men came together. The schuyts\nwere going out, and Jan was aboard his own boat making ready to cast\noff. Half the island folk were there--the fishermen about to sail, and\ntheir people come to see them get away. Some one--who did not see old\nJaap standing on the piling near where Jan's boat lay--called out: \"The\nfishing is good off Edam still, eh, Jan?\" And then there was a general\nlaugh as Jan answered, laughing also: \"Yes, there's good fishing off\nEdam--better than there is nearer home.\"\n\nAt this old Jaap broke forth into a passionate outburst against his\nson-in-law: calling him by all the evil names that he could get\ntogether, crying out against his wickedness and his cruelty, and\nending--as Jan's boat slid away from her moorings, with Jan standing at\nthe tiller laughing at the old man's fury--by calling out with a deep\ngrave energy, in strange contrast with his previous angry ravings: \"God\ncannot and will not forgive. He will judge you and He will punish you.\nIn His name I say to you: May the might of the angered waters be upon\nyou--may you perish in the wrath of the Zuyder Zee!\"\n\nThere was such a majesty in old Jaap's tone as he spoke those words,\nand such intense conviction, that all who heard him were thrilled\nstrangely. Some of the old men of Marken, who were there that day,\nstill will tell you that it seemed as though they heard the voice of\none who truly was the very mouth-piece of God. Even Jan, they say,\npaled a little; but only for a moment--and then he was off out of the\nharbour with a jeer and a laugh.\n\nBut that was Jan's last laugh and jeer at his father-in-law, and his\nlast sight of Marken. The next day the boats came hurrying home before\na storm, but Jan's boat did not come with them. At first it was thought\nthat he had put into the canal leading up to Edam--it was about there\nthat the other fishermen had lost sight of him--but a couple of days\nlater his boat drifted ashore, bottom upward, in the bight of Goudzee\nsouth of Monnikendam. That left room for guess-work. Certainty came at\nthe end of a fortnight: when the two men who had been with him got back\nto Marken--after a trip to England in the steamer that had picked them\nup afloat--and told how the schuyt had gone over in the gale and spilt\nthem all out into the sea. As for Jan, he never came back at all. As he\nand the other two men were thorough good sailors, and as the survivors\nthemselves were quite at a loss to account for their catastrophe, there\nwas only one way to explain the matter: old Jaap's curse had taken\neffect!\n\nAfter that old Jaap had a place still more apart from the other\nislanders. What he had done to one he could do to another, it was\nwhispered--and thenceforward he was both shunned and dreaded because of\nthe power for life and death that was believed to be his. The reflex of\nthis popular conviction seemed to find a place in his own heart, and\nnow and again he would threaten with his curse those who got at odds\nwith him. But he never uttered it; and the fact was observed that even\nin the case of the teasing little boys he was careful not to curse any\none of his tormentors by name.\n\n\nIII\n\nCertainly, if ever old Jaap had cursed any particular little boy it\nwould have been Krelis Kess--who was quite the worst boy on the island,\nand who usually was the leader of the troop that hung about the old\nman's heels.\n\nAnd even when Krelis got to be a big young fellow of twenty--old enough\nto go on escapades in Amsterdam of which the rumour, coming back to\nMarken, made all steady-going folk on the island look askance at\nhim--he still took an ugly pleasure, as occasion offered, in stirring\nup old Jaap's wrath. If the old man chanced to pass by while he was\nsitting of a Sunday afternoon in Jan de Jong's tavern, drinking more\ngin-and-water than was good for him, it was one of his jokes to call\nout through the open window \"Mad old Jaap!\" in the shrill voice of a\nchild; and to repeat his cry, with different inflections but always\nin the same shrill tones, until the old man would go off into a fury\nand shout his curse at the little boys who seemed to be so close\nabout him but who could not anywhere be seen. At that Krelis would\nfall to laughing mightily, and so would the loose young fellows his\ncompanions--who had found out that that would send his hand to his\npocket and give them free drinks all around.\n\nUnder such conditions it is not surprising that the wonder, and also\nthe regret, of these young scapegraces was very great when on a certain\nSunday afternoon in mid-spring time Krelis not only did not volunteer\nhis usual pleasantry at old Jaap's expense--as the old man came\nshambling up the narrow street toward the tavern--but actually refused\nto practise it when it was suggested to him. And the wonder grew to\nbe blank astonishment, a minute later, when he went to the window and\nbegged Herr Visser to come in and have a glass of schnapps with him!\nTo hear old Jaap called \"Herr Visser\" by anybody was enough to stretch\nto the widest any pair of Marken ears; but to hear him addressed in\nthat stately fashion by Krelis Kess was enough to make any Marken man\nbelieve that his ears had gone crazy!\n\nAt first the young scamps in the tavern were quite sure that Krelis\nwas about to play some new trick on old Jaap, and that this wonderful\npoliteness was the beginning of it. But the marvel increased when\nthe old man--who liked schnapps as well as anybody--joined the little\ncompany of tosspots and was treated by Krelis with as much respect as\nthough he had been a burgomaster! And more than that, when the session\nwas ended--and old Jaap, to whom such treats came rarely, was so far\nfuddled that he could not manage his legs easily--Krelis said that\nnothing could be pleasanter than a walk across to the Kerkehof in the\ncool of the evening, and so gave him a steadying arm home. As the two\nset off together the young fellows left behind stared at each other in\nsheer amazement; and such of the Marken folk as chanced to meet this\nstrangely assorted couple marching amicably arm in arm together were\ninclined to disbelieve in their own eyes!\n\nFor a week, while they all were away at their fishing, there was a lull\nin the excitement; but it was aroused again the next Sunday when Krelis\ndid not come as usual to the tavern--and went to a white heat when a\nlate arrival, a young fellow who lived in the Kerkehof, told that as he\ncame past Jaap Visser's house he had seen Krelis sitting on the bench\nin front of it talking away with old Jaap and making eyes behind old\nJaap's back at Marretje. At first, being so entirely incredible, this\nstatement was scouted scornfully; but it aroused so lively a discussion\nthat presently the whole company left the tavern and went over in a\nbody to the Kerkehof bent upon disproving or verifying it--and there,\nsure enough, were old Jaap and Krelis smoking their pipes together, and\nMarretje along with them, on the bench in front of old Jaap's door!\n\nYoung Jan de Jong--the son of the tavern-keeper--expressed the feelings\nof the company when he said, later, that as they stood there looking at\nthat strange sight you might have knocked down the whole of them with\nthe flirt of a skate's tail! But they did not stop long to look at it.\nKrelis glared at them so savagely, and his big fists doubled up in so\nthreatening a fashion, that they took themselves off in a hurry--and\nback to the tavern to talk it over, while they bathed their wonder in\nvery lightly watered gin.\n\n\nIV\n\nThat was the beginning of Krelis Kess's courting of Marretje de\nWitt--about which, in a moment, all the island blazed with talk.\nUntil then, in a light-loving way, Krelis had been keeping company\nwith Geert Thysen. That seemed a natural sort of match, for Geert and\nKrelis had much the same bold way with them and well enough might have\npaired. But Geert, like Krelis, had a devil of a temper, and it was\nsupposed that an angry spat between them had sent Krelis flying off in\na rage from her spit-firing--and that the gentle Marretje had caught\nhis heart on the rebound. The elders, reasoning together out of their\nworldly wisdom, perceived that under the law of liking for unlike this\nbold-going young fellow very well might be drawn toward a maiden all\ngentleness; and that, because of her gentleness, Marretje would find a\nthrilling pleasure in the strong love-making with which Krelis would\nstrive to take her heart by storm. All that, as they knew, was human\nnature. Had they known books also they would have cited the case of\nDesdemona and the Moor.\n\nHowever, there was not much time for talking. Krelis was not of the\nsort to let grass grow under his feet in any matter, and in a love\nmatter least of all. Nor were there any obstacles to bar his way. He\nhad his own boat, that came to him when his father was drowned; and he\nhad his own house in the Kesbeurt, where he had lived alone since his\nmother had ended a notably short widowhood by marrying a second time.\nOld Jaap, moreover, was ready enough to accept as a son-in-law the only\nman in Marken who ever had styled him Herr Visser, and who in addition\nto that unparalleled courtesy had given him in quick succession nearly\na dozen bottles of the best Schiedam. There was nothing to hinder the\nmarriage, therefore, but Marretje's shyness--and Krelis overcame that\nquickly in his own masterful way.\n\nAnd so everybody saw that matters were like to come quickly to a\nclimax--everybody, that is, except Geert Thysen, who said flatly that\nthe marriage was both impossible and absurd. Geert had her own notion\nthat Krelis was serving her out for her hard words to him, and was only\nwaiting for a soft word to come back to her--and she bit those full red\nlips of hers with her strong teeth and resolved that she would keep\nhim waiting until he was quite in despair. Then, at the very last, she\nwould whistle him back to her--with a laugh in his face first, and then\nsuch a kiss as all the Marretjes in the world could not give him--and\nthe comedy of his mock courtship would be at an end. Sometimes, to be\nsure, the thought did cross her mind that Krelis might not come to her\nwhistle. Then the color would go out of her red cheeks a little, and\nas she ground her big white teeth together she would have a half-formed\nvision of Krelis lying dead somewhere with a knife in his heart. But\nvisions of this sort came seldom, and were quickly banished--with a\nsharp little laugh at her own folly in fancying even for an instant\nthat Krelis could hesitate in choosing between herself and that limp\npale doll.\n\nAnd then, one day, she found herself face to face with the fact that\nKrelis had not been playing a comedy at all. The news was all over the\nisland that he and Marretje were to be married the next Sunday; and\nthat he meant to be married handsomely, with a great wedding-feast at\nJan de Jong's tavern in Jan de Jong's best style. \"So there's an end of\nyour lover for you, Geert Thysen!\" said Jaantje de Waard, who brought\nthe news to her.\n\nAt this Geert's red cheeks grew a little redder, and her big black eyes\nhad a brighter flash to them; but she only laughed as she answered:\n\"It's one thing to lay the net--but it's another to haul it in!\" And\nJaantje remembered afterward what a strange look was in her face as she\nsaid those strange words.\n\n\nV\n\nThe wedding was the finest that had been known in Marken for years. At\nthe church the parson gave his \"Golden Clasp\" address, which was the\nmost beautiful of his three wedding addresses and cost five gulden.\nThen the company streamed away along the brick-paved pathway from the\nKerkehof to the Hafenbeurt, with the sunshine gleaming gallantly on the\nwhite caps and white aprons of the women and on the shiny high hats\nof the men, while the wind fluttered the little Dutch flags--and they\nall walked much more steadily then than they did when they took their\nafter-breakfast walk, before the dancing began. In that second walk\nthe men's legs wavered a good deal, and some of them had trouble in\nsteering the stems of their long pipes to their mouths. But that is not\nto be wondered at when you think what a breakfast it was! Jan de Jong\nfairly excelled himself. They talk about it in Marken to this day!\n\nWhile the wedding-party walked unsteadily abroad the big room in the\ntavern was cleared; and when the company was come back again, much the\nbetter for fresh air and exercise, the dancing began. And just then a\nvery queer thing happened: Krelis led off the dance with Geert Thysen\ninstead of with Marretje his bride!\n\nSome say that Geert made him promise to do this as the price of her\ncoming to the wedding; others say that it was done on the spur of the\nmoment--was one of Geert's sudden whims that Krelis, who also was given\nto sudden whims, fell in with. About the truth of this matter there\ncan be only guess-work, but about what happened there is plain fact:\nJust as the set was forming, Krelis dropped Marretje's hand and said\nlightly: \"You won't mind, Marretje, will you? It's for old friendship's\nsake, you know.\" And with that he took the hand of Geert Thysen, who\nwas standing close beside him, and away he went with her in the dance.\nThose who think that it had been arranged between them beforehand point\nout that Geert had refused all offers to dance and had come close to\nKrelis just as the set was formed. There is something in that, I think.\nBut whether they had planned it or had not planned it, the fact remains\nthat Marretje's place at the head of the dance at her own wedding was\ntaken by another woman; and as the set was complete without her, she\ndid not dance at all until the first figure came to an end. They say\nthat there were tears in her eyes as she stood alone there--and that\nshe was very white when Krelis took her hand again, at the end of the\nfirst figure, and gave her for the rest of the dance the place at the\nhead of it that was hers. They say, too, that Geert stood watching\nthem--when Krelis had left her and had taken his bride again--with a\nhot blaze of color coming and going in her cheeks, and with a wonderful\nflashing and sparkling of her great black eyes. And before the dance\nended Geert went home.\n\nThere was a great crackling of talk, of course, about this slight that\nKrelis had put upon Marretje on her wedding-day; and people shook their\nheads and said that worse must come after it. Some of the stories about\nKrelis's escapades in Amsterdam were raked up again and were pointed\nwith a fresh moral. As for Geert, the Marken women had but one opinion\nof her--and the least unkindly expression of it was that she was\nwalking in a very dangerous path. But when echoes of this talk came to\nGeert's ears--as they did, of course--she merely curled her red lips\na little and said that as she was neither a weak woman nor a foolish\nwoman she was safe to walk where she pleased.\n\n\nVI\n\nIt was a little disconcerting to the prophets of evil that the weeks\nand the months slipped away without any signs of the fulfilment of\ntheir prophecies. However keen may have been Marretje's sorrow on\nher wedding-day, it was not lasting. Indeed, her gentle nature was\nso filled with a worshipping love for Krelis that he had only to\ngive her a single light look of affection or a half-careless kiss to\nfill her whole being with happiness. He was a god to her--this gayly\ndaring young fellow who had raised her up to be a shy little queen\nin a queendom, she was sure, such as never had been for any other\nwoman in all the world. And Krelis was very well pleased with her\nfrank adoration. It was tickling to his vanity that she should be so\ncompletely and so eagerly his loving slave.\n\nNext to her love for Krelis--and partly because it was a part of her\nlove for him--Marretje's greatest joy was in her housekeeping. She\nhad taken a just pride in the tidiness of her housekeeping for her\ngrandfather; but it was a very different and far more exciting matter\nto furbish and polish a house that really was her own. And Krelis's\nhouse, of which she was the proud mistress, was far bigger and far\nfiner than her old home. It was a stately dwelling, for Marken,\nstanding on an out-jutting ridge of earth at the back of the Kesbeurt,\nclose upon a delightful little canal--and from the back doorway was a\nrestful far-off outlook over the marsh-land to the level horizon of\nthe Zuyder Zee. Marretje loved that outlook, and she had it before her\noften: for down beside the canal was her scouring-shelf--where she\nscoured away through long sunny mornings, while Krelis was away at his\nfishing, until her pots and kettles ranged in the sunlight shone like\nburnished gold.\n\nYet the fact should be added that when the old men of Marken talked\ntogether about this fine house of Krelis Kess's they would shake their\nheads a little--saying that a better spending of money would have been\nfor a smaller house founded on solid piling, instead of for this showy\ndwelling standing on an out-thrust earth bank which well enough might\ncrumble away beneath it in some time of tremendous tempest when all\nthe island should be overswept and beaten by the sea.\n\nFor the most part, of course--save for little chats with her\nneighbours--Marretje was alone in that fine house of hers. Old Jaap had\ncome to live with the young people--as was only fair, since he had no\none but his granddaughter to care for him--but both he and Krelis spent\nall their week-days afloat at their fishing and only their Sundays at\nhome. Yet now and then the old man, making some excuse for not going\nout with the fleet, would give himself a turn at shore duty; and would\nsit in his big chair, smoking his long pipe very contentedly, watching\nhis granddaughter at her endless scouring and cleaning, and listening\nto her little bursts of song. In his unsettled old mind he sometimes\nfancied that the years had rolled backward and that he was watching\nhis own young wife again; and in his old heart he would dream young\nlove-dreams by the hour together--blessedly forgetting that the love\nand the happiness which had made his life beautiful had been snatched\naway from him and lost forever in the wrathful waters of the Zuyder Zee.\n\n[Illustration: \"IT WAS A STATELY DWELLING\"]\n\nBut Marretje's love-dreams were living ones. As Krelis lounged over\nhis pipe of a Sunday morning, taking life easily in his clean Sunday\nclothes, he would say an airy word or two in praise of her housekeeping\nthat fairly would set her to blushing with happiness--and what with the\ncolour in her fair face and the light in her blue eyes she would be so\nentirely charming that Krelis's own eyes would go to sparkling, and he\nwould draw her close to him and fondle her in a genuinely loverlike\nfashion that would fill her with a very tender joy. Krelis was quite\nsincere in his love-making. His little Marretje's soft beauty, and her\nshy delight in his caresses, went down into an unsounded depth and\ntouched an unknown strain of gentleness in his easy-going heart.\n\nBut even on the first Sunday after they were married Krelis went off\nafter dinner--it had been a wonder of a dinner that Marretje had\ncooked for him: she had been planning it the week through!--to join\nhis companions as usual at Jan de Jong's. This came hard on Marretje.\nShe had been counting so much on that afternoon! A dozen little tender\nconfidences had been put aside during the morning to be made then\ncomfortably: when the dinner things would all be cleared away, and her\ngrandfather would have gone to take his usual Sunday look at his boat,\nand she and Krelis would be sitting at their ease--delightfully alone\ntogether for the first time in their lives!\n\nShe had thought it all out, and had arranged in her own mind that they\nwould sit on the steps above her scouring-shelf--at the back of the\nhouse and hidden away from everybody--with the canal at their feet,\nand in front of them the level loneliness of the marsh-land stretching\naway and losing itself in the level loneliness of the sea. She had\na cushion all ready for Krelis to sit on, and a smaller cushion for\nherself that was to go on the next lower step--and she blushed a little\nto herself as she thought how she would make a back to lean against out\nof Krelis's big knees. And then, just as she had finished her clearing\naway and was getting out the cushions, Krelis put on his hat and said\nthat he thought he would step across to the tavern and have a look at\nthe boys. The boys would laugh at him, he said, if he settled right\ndown into being an old married man--and he tried to give a better\nsend-off to this small pleasantry by laughing at it himself. But he\ndid not laugh very heartily, and he almost turned back again when he\ngot to the bridge--thinking how the light of happiness which had made\nMarretje's face so beautiful through that Sunday morning suddenly had\ndied out of it as he came away. And then he pulled himself together\nwith the reflection that she would be all right again when he got back\nto her at supper-time, and so went on. When he was come to the tavern\nhe forgot all about Marretje's unhappiness, for the boys welcomed him\nwith a cheer.\n\nBeing in this way forsaken, Marretje carried out what was left of her\nbroken plan forlornly--arranging the cushions on the two steps, and\nsitting on the lower one with her elbow resting on the upper one, and\ngazing out sorrowfully across the marsh-land and the sea. That great\nloneliness of sedge and sea and sky made her own loneliness more\nbitter: and then came the hurting thought that just a week before, very\nnearly at that same hour, Krelis still more cruelly had forsaken her\nwhile he led with Geert Thysen their wedding-dance.\n\nAfter a while old Jaap came home and seated himself beside her. He was\nsilent, as was his habit, but having him that way soothed and comforted\nher. As she leaned her head against his shoulder and held his big bony\nhands the old man went off into one of his dream-fancies that his\nyoung wife was beside him again--and perhaps, in some subtle way, that\nalso helped to take the sting out of her pain. When Krelis came home at\nsupper-time, walking a little unsteadily, he did not miss her flow of\nchattering talk that had gone on through the morning; and presently it\nbegan again--for Krelis returned in high good-humour, and his fire of\npretty speeches and his kisses quickly brought happiness back to her\nsore little heart. Knowing thereafter what to expect of a Sunday, her\npleasure was less lively--but so was her pain.\n\n\nVII\n\nIt was a little past the turn of the half-year after the wedding that\nthe prophets of evil pricked up their ears hopefully--as there began to\ngo humming through Marken a soft buzz of talk about the carryings on\nof Geert Thysen and Krelis Kess. It was only vague talk, to be sure;\nbut then when talk of that sort is vague there is the more seaway\nfor speculation and inference. All sorts of rumours went flashing\nabout--and carried the more weight, perhaps, because they could not\nbe traced to a starting-point and were disavowed by each person who\npassed them on. The sum of them became quite amazing before long!\n\nIn the end, of course, this talk worked around to Marretje. Bit by\nbit, one kind friend after another brought her variations of the same\nbudget of news, pleading their friendship for her as the excuse for\ntheir chattering; and all of them were a good deal disconcerted by the\nplacid way, with scarcely a word of comment, in which she suffered them\nto talk on. Only when they took to saying harsh things about Krelis\ndid they rouse her a little. Then she would stop them shortly, and\nwith a quiet insistence that put them in an awkward corner, by asking\nthem to remember that it was her husband whom they were talking about,\nand that what they were saying was not fit for his wife to hear. This\nline of rejoinder was disconcerting to her interlocutors. To be put\nin the wrong, that way, while performing for conscience' sake a very\nunpleasant duty, could not but arouse resentment. Presently it began\nto be said that Marretje was a poor-spirited thing upon whom friendly\nsympathy was thrown away.\n\nPerhaps it was because Marretje was not feeling very strong just then\nthat she took matters so quietly. Certainly she had not much energy\nto spare, and her days went slowly and heavily. Even on the Sunday\nmornings when she had Krelis at home with her--and a good many of his\nSundays were spent away from the island, in order, as he explained,\nthat he might get off on the Mondays earlier to his fishing--she found\nit hard to keep up the laughing talk and the light-hearted way with him\nthat he seemed to think always were his due. When she flagged a little\nhe told her not to be sulky--and that cut her sharply, for she thought\nthat he ought to feel in his own heart how very tenderly she was loving\nhim in those days, and how earnestly she was longing for a tender and\nsustaining love in return.\n\nIt is uncertain how much of all this old Jaap understood, but a part\nof it he certainly did understand. In some matters his clouded brain\nseemed to work with a curious clearness, and especially had he a\nstrange faculty for getting close to troubled hearts. Many there were\nin Marken, on whom sorrow had fallen, who had been comforted by his\nsympathy; and who had found it the more soothing and helpful because\nit was given with no more than a gentle look or a few gentle words.\nIn this same soft way, that asked for no answer and that needed none,\nhe comforted Marretje in that sad time of her loneliness. Many a day,\nwhen the other fishermen kept the sea, he kept the land--letting his\nboat go away to the fishing without him while he made company at home\nfor his granddaughter, and even helped her in the heavier part of her\nhouse-work with his big clumsy old hands. These awkward efforts to\nserve her touched Marretje's heart very keenly--yet also added a pang\nto her sorrow because of her longing that Krelis might show his love\nfor her in the same way.\n\nBut old Jaap had his work to do at sea, and Marretje had to make the\nbest of many and many a weary and lonely day. Being in so poor a way\nshe could busy herself but little with her house-work--nor was there\nmuch incentive to scour and polish since Krelis had ceased to commend\nher housekeeping; and, indeed, was at home so little that he was\nindifferent as to whether she kept her house well or ill.\n\nAnd so she spent much of her time as she had spent that first lonely\nSunday afternoon--sitting on the steps above her scouring-shelf,\nlooking out sadly and dreamily across the marsh-land and the sea. Or\nshe would walk slowly to the end of the village, where rough steps\nwent down to a little-used canal, and there would lean against the\nrail while she gazed steadfastly across the marshes seaward--trying to\nfancy that she could see the fishing fleet, and trying to build in her\nbreast little hope-castles in which Krelis again was all her own. They\ncomforted her, these hope-castles: even though always, when the week\nended and the fleet was back again, they came crashing down. Sometimes\nKrelis's boat did not return at all. Sometimes it returned without him.\nWhen he did come back in it very little of his idle Sunday was passed\nat home. The dark months of winter dragged on wearily. Grey chill\nclouds hung over Marken, and grey chill clouds rested on this poor\nMarretje's heart.\n\n\nVIII\n\nBut one glad day in the early spring-time the sun shone again--when\nKrelis bent down over her bed with a look of real love in his bright\neyes and kissed her; and then--in a half-fearful way that made her\nlaugh at him with a weak little laugh in which there was great\nhappiness--kissed also his little son. \"As if his father's kiss could\nhurt this great strong boy!\" she said in a tone of vast superiority:\nand held the little atom close to her breast with all the strength\nof her feeble arms. She loved with a double love this little Krelis:\ngreatly for himself and for the strong thrilling joy of motherhood, but\nperhaps even more because his coming had brought the other Krelis back\nagain into the deep chambers of her heart.\n\nIt was the prettiest of sights, presently, when she was up and about\nagain, to see Marretje standing in front of her own door in the spring\nsunshine holding this famous little Krelis in her arms. Then, as now,\nyoung mothers were common enough in Marken; but there was a look of\nradiant happiness about Marretje--so the old people will tell you--that\nmade her different from any young mother whom ever they saw. \"Her face\nwas as shining as the face of an angel!\" one of the old women said to\nme--when I heard this story told in Marken on a summer day. And this\nsame old woman told me that through that time of Marretje's great\nhappiness Geert Thysen walked sullen: ready at any moment, without\ncause or reason, to fly out into what the old woman called a yellow\nrage.\n\nBut even from the first the matrons of the island, knowing in such\nmatters, pulled long faces when they talked about the little Krelis\namong themselves. Krelis Kess's son, they said, should not have been\nso frail a child; and then they would account for this puny baby by\ncasting back to the time when Marretje was orphaned before she was\nweaned, and so was started in life without the toughness and sturdiness\nwith which the Marken folk as a rule are dowered. These worthy women\nhad much good advice to give, and gave it freely, as to how the little\nKrelis should be dealt with to strengthen him; but Marretje paid scant\nattention to their suggestions, being satisfied in her own mind that\nthis wonderful baby of hers really was--as she had said he was on the\nday when his father first kissed him--a great strong boy.\n\nKrelis, seeing his little son only once a week, was the first to notice\nthat he was not so strong as a healthy child should be; but when he\nsaid so to Marretje she gave him such a rating that he decided he must\nbe all wrong. And then, one day, Geert Thysen opened both his and\nMarretje's eyes.\n\nIt was a bright Sunday afternoon, when the little Krelis was between\ntwo and three months old, that Marretje was sitting with him on her\nlap, suckling him, on the steps above her scouring-shelf; and Krelis\nwas seated on the step above her, and she really was making a back of\nhis big knees. What with the joy of her motherhood, and her joy because\nher Krelis was her own again, it seemed to Marretje as though in all\nthe world there was only happiness. She held the little Krelis close\nto her, crooning a soft song sweetly over the tiny creature nestled to\nher heart; and as she suckled him there tingled through her breast, and\nthence through all her being, thrills of that strange subtle ecstasy\nwhich only mothers know. And Krelis, in his own way, shared Marretje's\ngreat happiness: as they sat there lonely, looking out over the\nmarsh-land seaward, their hearts very near together because of the deep\nlove that was in both of them for their child. Presently Krelis leaned\na little forward, and with a touch rarely loving and tender encircled\nthe two in his big arms and drew Marretje still closer against his\nknees. And they sat there for a while so--in the bright silence of that\nsunny afternoon, fronting that still outlook over level spaces cut\nonly by the level sky-line far away--their two hearts throbbing gently\nand very full.\n\nA little noise broke the deep silence suddenly, and an instant later\nGeert Thysen was almost within arm's-length of them--standing in a boat\nwhich she had poled very quietly along the canal. Krelis unclasped his\narms and drew back quickly; but Marretje bent forward and grasped the\nlittle Krelis still more closely, as though to shield him from harm.\nFor a moment there was silence. Krelis flushed and looked uneasy,\nalmost ashamed. There was a dull burning light in Geert's black eyes\nand her face was pale and drawn. She was the first to speak.\n\n\"You're quite right to make the most of your sick baby,\" she said. \"You\nwon't have him long.\"\n\n\"He's not a sick baby,\" Marretje answered furiously. \"He's as strong\nand well as he can be!\"\n\nGeert laughed. \"That puny little thing strong and well!\" she answered.\n\"Much it is that you know about babies, Marretje! Don't you see how the\nveins show through his skin? Don't you see the marks under his eyes?\nDon't you see how little he is, and how he don't grow? In another\nmonth you'll know more. He'll be over yonder in the graveyard by that\ntime!\" And then she flashed a look on Krelis of that sort of hate which\ncomes when love goes wrong as she added: \"And it is no more than you\ndeserve, Krelis Kess. You might have had a strong woman for a wife, and\nthen you would have had a strong child!\" With that she gave a sudden\nthrust with the pole that sent her boat flying away from them, and in\nan instant vanished around a turn in the canal.\n\n\nIX\n\nWithin a week the story of what had happened between them was all\nover Marken. Geert Thysen herself must have told what she had done.\nCertainly Krelis did not tell; and Marretje, having no one else to\nturn to, told only her grandfather. But various versions of the story\nwent about the island, and the comment upon all of them by the Marken\nfolk was the same: that Krelis had played the part of a coward in\nsuffering such words to be spoken to his wife with never a word on his\nside of reply. Old Jaap, they say, blazed out into one of his mad\nrages against his son-in-law. Some say that he then laid the curse upon\nhim--but that never will be known certainly, for the bout between the\ntwo men took place when they were alone.\n\nWhat is known to be true is that Krelis for a while was as a man\nstunned; and that when he came to himself again--this was after\nthe little Krelis was laid away in the graveyard--what love he had\nfor Marretje was turned to an angry hatred because she had let his\nboy die. He said this not only to his neighbours but to Marretje\nherself--telling her that their child had died because she had borne it\nweakly into the world and had given it no strength with which to live.\n\nEven a strong woman, being well-nigh heart-broken--as Marretje was\nwhen her baby was lost to her--could not have stood up against a\nblow like that. And Marretje, who was not a strong woman, felt the\nheart-breaking bitterness of what Krelis said because she knew that it\nwas true. Very soon she was as feeble and as wan as the little Krelis\nhad been. Happiness was no more for her, and she longed only for the\nforgetfulness of sorrow which would come to her when she should be\nas the little Krelis was. And so her slight hold on life loosened\nquickly, and presently she and the little Krelis lay in the graveyard\nside by side.\n\nShe had a very nice funeral, so one of the old women in Marken told me:\nthe best bier and the best pall were used, and the minister gave his\nbest address--the one called \"The Mourning Wreath\"--at the grave. And,\nto end with, there was a breakfast in Jan de Jong's tavern that was of\nthe best too. It was only just to Krelis, the old woman said, to say\nthat in the matter of the funeral he behaved very well indeed.\n\nBut one thing which he did at that breakfast showed that it was for his\nown pride, and not for the sake of Marretje, that everything was done\nin so fine a style. On Marken there was left no near woman relative of\nMarretje's, and when the guests came to the table they were a good deal\nscandalized by finding that Geert Thysen was to be seated on Krelis's\nright hand. Old Jaap's place was on his left, but when the old man saw\nwho was to take the seat on the right he drew back quickly from the\ntable and left the room.\n\nAt that, for a full half-minute there was an awkward pause--until\nKrelis, in a strong voice, bade the company be seated: and added that\nno one had a better right to the seat beside him than Marretje's oldest\nfriend. As he made this speech a little buzzing whisper went around\namong the company, and some one even snickered down at the lower end\nof the big room. But there was the breakfast, as good as it could be,\nbefore them. It was much too good a breakfast to lose on a mere point\nof etiquette. The whispering died out, and for a moment the guests\nlooked at one another in silence--and then there was a great scraping\nand rattling of chairs as they all sat down. And Krelis and Geert\npresided over the funeral feast with a most proper gravity--save that\nnow and then a glance passed between them that seemed to have more\nmeaning than was quite decorous in the case of those two: the one being\na maiden, and the other a widower whose wife had not been buried quite\ntwo hours.\n\nOf course there was a good deal of talk about all this afterward; but\nas public opinion had been moulded under favour able conditions--while\nthe mellowing influence of the good food and abundant drink was still\noperative--the talk was not by any means relentlessly harsh. The men\nopenly smiled at the proof which Krelis had given that his loss was\nnot irreparable; and the women, with a certain primness, admitted\nthat--after all the talk there had been--Krelis owed it to Geert to\nmarry her with as little delay as the proprieties of the case would\nallow.\n\nBut even this kindly public opinion was strained sharply by the\ndiscovery that the marriage was to take place only two months after\nthat funeral feast at which, to all intents and purposes, it had been\nannounced. That was going, the women said, altogether too fast. But\nthe men only laughed again--partly at the way in which the women were\nstanding up for the respect due to their sex, and partly at Krelis's\nhurry to take on again the bonds from which he had been so very\nrecently set free.\n\nHere and there among the talkers a questioning word would be put in as\nto how old Jaap would take this move on the part of his son-in-law. But\neven the few people who bothered their heads with this phase of the\nmatter held that old Jaap never would have a clear enough understanding\nof it to resent the dishonour put upon his granddaughter's memory. He\nhad returned to his home in the Kerkehof and was living there, in his\nown queer way, solitary. He was madder than ever, people said; and\nit was certain that he had gone back to his old habit of spending in\nthe graveyard all of the days and many of the nights which he passed\nashore. Often those who passed by night between the Hafenbeurt and the\nKerkehof saw him there--keeping his strange watch among the graves.\n\n\nX\n\nWhat the Marken folk still speak of as \"the great storm\"--the worst\nstorm of which there is record in the island's history--set in a good\nfour-and-twenty hours before the December day on which Geert Thysen\nand Krelis Kess were married. From the Polar ice-fields a rushing\nand a mighty wind thundered southward over the Arctic Ocean and down\nacross the shallows of the North Sea--sucking away the water from the\nBaltic, sending a roaring tide out through the English Channel into the\nAtlantic, and piling higher and higher against the Holland coast a wall\nof ocean: which broke at the one opening and went pouring onward into\nthe Zuyder Zee.\n\nAlready on the morning of that wild wedding-day the waves were lapping\nhigh about Marken, and here and there a dull gleam of water showed\nwhere the marshes were overflowed. Just before daybreak the storm\nlulled a little, but came on again with a fresh force after the unseen\nsunrise, and grew stronger and stronger as the black day wore on. Down\nby the little haven the fishermen were gathered in groups anxiously\nwatching their tossing boats--in dread lest in spite of the doubled and\ntripled moorings they should fetch away. Steadily from the black sky\npoured downward sheets of rain.\n\nAccording to Marken notions, even a landsman should not have ventured\nto marry on a day like that; and for a fisherman to marry while such\na storm was raging was a sheer tempting of all the forces which work\ntogether for evil in the tempests of the sea. Every one expected that\nthe wedding would be put off; and when word was passed around that\nit was not to be put off, all of the older and steadier folk refused\nwith one voice to have anything to do with it. How Krelis succeeded in\ninducing the minister to perform the ceremony no one ever knew--for\nthe minister was one of the many that day on Marken who never saw the\nrising of another sun. He was not well liked, that minister, and\nstories not to his credit were whispered about him; at least so one of\nthe old women told me--and more than half hinted that what happened to\nhim was a judgment upon him for his sins.\n\nEven when the wedding-party came across from the Kerkehof to the\nHafenbeurt, some little time before mid-day, the marshes on each side\nof the raised path were marshes no longer, but open water--that was\nwhipped southward before the gale in little angry waves. There was no\nchance for a show of finery. The men wore their oil-skins over their\nSunday clothes, and the women were wrapped in cloaks and shawls. But it\nwas a company of young dare-devils, that wedding-party, and the members\nof it came on through the storm laughing and shouting--with Geert and\nKrelis leading and the gayest madcaps of them all. So far from being\ndismayed by the roaring tempest, those two wild natures seemed only\nto be stirred and aroused by it to a fierce happiness. They say that\nGeert never was so beautiful as she was that day--her face glowing with\na strong rich colour, her eyes sparkling with a wonderful brilliancy,\nher full red lips parted and showing the gleam of those strong white\nteeth of hers, her lithe body erect and poised confidently against the\nfurious wind which swept them all forward along the path.\n\nBut as the party came near to the graveyard, lying midway between the\nKerkehof and the Hafenbeurt close beside the path, some of the young\nmen and women found their merriment oozing out of them. In that day\nof black storm the rain-sodden mound was inexpressibly desolate. All\naround it, save for the pathway leading up to its gate, the marsh was\nflooded. The graveyard almost was an island--would be quite an island\nshould the water rise another foot. Rushed onward by the gale, shrewd\nlittle waves were beating against its windward side so sharply that the\nsoft soil visibly was crumbling away--a sight which recalled a dim but\nvery grisly legend of how once a great storm had hurled such a sea upon\nMarken that the dead bodies lying in that very spot had been torn from\ntheir resting-places by the tumultuous waves. But crueler still was\nthe shivering thought of Marretje, only two months dead, lying in that\nsodden ground in her storm-beaten grave.\n\nAnd then, as they came closer, the memory of Marretje was brought home\nto them still more sharply and in a strangely startling way: as they\nsaw old Jaap uprise suddenly from where he had been crouched amidst\nthe graves. Bareheaded, with his long grey hair and long grey beard\nsoaked with the falling torrent and flying out before the wind, he\nstood upright on the crest of the mound close above them--his tall lean\nfigure towering commandingly against the black rain clouds, defiant as\nsome old sea-god of the furious storm.\n\nHe seemed to be speaking, but the storm noises were as a wall shutting\nhim off from them, and not until they had passed on a little and were\nto leeward of him could they hear his words. Then they heard him\nclearly: speaking slowly, with no trace of anger in his tones but\nwith a strange solemn fervour--as though he felt himself to be out\nbeyond the line which separates Time from Eternity, and from that\nvantage-point uttered with authority the judgments of an outraged God.\nIt was to Geert and Krelis that he spoke, pointing at them with one\noutstretched hand while the other was raised as though in invocation\ntoward the wild black sky: \"For your sins the anger of God is loosed\nupon you in His tempests, and in His name I curse you with a binding\ncurse. May the raging waters be upon you! May you perish in the wrath\nof the Zuyder Zee!\"\n\nA shudder went through all the wedding company. Even Krelis, half\nstopping, suddenly paled. Only Geert, bolder than all of them put\ntogether, held her own. With a quick motion she drew Krelis onward, and\nher lip curled in that way of hers as she said to him: \"What has old\nJaap to do with you or me, Krelis? He is a mad old fool!\" And then she\nlooked straight at old Jaap, into the very eyes of him, and laughed\nscornfully--as they all together went on again through the wind and\nrain.\n\nBut when they came to Jan de Jong's tavern, where the wedding-breakfast\nwas waiting for them, Krelis was the first to call for gin. He said\nthat he was cold.\n\n\nXI\n\nIt was the strangest wedding-feast, they say, that ever was held on\nMarken: with the black tempest beating outside, and all the lamps in\nthe big room lighted--although the day still was on the morning side\nof noon. Young Jan de Jong--the same who is old Jan de Jong now, and\nwho now keeps the tavern--remembers it all well, and tells how his\nmother was for bundling the whole company out of doors. Such doings\nwould bring bad luck upon the house, she said--and went up-stairs and\nlocked herself into her room and took to praying when her husband told\nher that bad luck never came with good money, and that what Krelis was\nwilling to pay for Krelis should have.\n\nBut it was the wife who was right that time--as the husband knew a\nvery little later on. For that night Krelis's boat was one of those\nswept away from their moorings and foundered, and Krelis's fine house\nwas undermined by the water and went out over the Zuyder Zee in\nfragments--and so the wedding-feast never was paid for at all. And she\nalways said that but for her prayers their son would have been lost to\nthem too. Old Jan was very grave when he told me about this--and from\nsome of the others I learned that it was because of what happened to\nhim that night that he gave over the wild life that he had been leading\nand became a steady man.\n\nAt first, what with the blackness of the storm and the ringing in\neverybody's ears of old Jaap's curse, the company was a dismal one.\nBut the plentiful hot gin-and-water that Krelis ordered--and led in\ndrinking--soon brought cheerfulness back again. As for Geert, she\nhad no need of gin-and-water: her high spirits held from first to\nlast. Seated on Krelis's right--just as she had been seated only a\nlittle while before on the day of Marretje's funeral--she rattled away\nsteadily with her gay talk; and every now and then, they say, turned to\nKrelis with a look that brought fire into his eyes!\n\nThe walk after breakfast was out of the question. As the afternoon went\non the storm raged more and more tumultuously. There was nothing for it\nbut to have the room cleared of the chairs and table and go straight on\nto the dancing; and that they did--excepting some of the weaker-headed\nones, whose legs were too badly tangled for such gay exercise and who\nsat limply on the benches against the wall.\n\nThis time it was not by favour but by right that Geert led the dance\nwith Krelis--her black eyes shining and her face all of a rich red\nglow. And as she took her place at the head of it she said to Jaantje\nde Waard: \"Who's got him now, this lover of mine you said I'd lost,\nJaantje? Didn't I tell you that it's one thing to lay the net, but\nit's another to haul it in?\" And away she went, caught close to\nKrelis, with a laugh on those red lips of hers and a brighter sparkle\nin her black eyes. Jaantje said--it was she who told me, an old woman\nnow--that somehow this speech of Geert's, and the sudden thought that\nit brought of dead Marretje out there in the graveyard, made her\nfeel so queasy in her stomach that she left the dance and went home\nbare-headed through the storm.\n\nThe dancing, with plenty of drink between whiles, went on until\nevening; and after night-fall the company grew still merrier--partly\nbecause of the punch, but more because the feast lost much of its\ngrewsomeness when they all knew that the darkness outside was the\nordinary darkness of black night and not the strange darkness of that\nblack day. But there was no break in the storm; and now and then,\nwhen a fierce burst of wind fairly set the house to rocking on its\nfoundations, and sent the rain dashing in sheets against the windows,\nthere would be anxious talk among those of the dancers who came from\nthe Kerkehof or the Kesbeurt as to how they were to get home. From time\nto time one of the men would open the door a little and take a look\noutside--and would draw in again in a hurry and go straight to the\npunch-bowl for comforting: for none of them had seen any storm like\nthat on Marken in all their lives.\n\nAnd so, when at last the storm did lull a little--this was about eight\no'clock in the evening, close upon the moonrise--there was a general\ndisposition to take advantage of the break and get away. And Krelis did\nnot urge his guests to stay longer, for he was of the same mind with\nthem--being eager to carry off homeward his Geert with the flashing\neyes.\n\nBut when the men went out of doors together to have a look about them\nthey were brought up suddenly with a round turn. It is only a step from\nJan de Jong's tavern to the head of the path that dips downward and\nleads across the marshes to the other villages. But when they had taken\nthat step no path was to be seen! Close at their feet, and stretching\naway in front of them as far as their eyes could reach through the\nnight-gloom, was to be seen only tumultuous black water flecked here\nand there with patches of foam. Everywhere over Marken, save the\ngraveyard mound and the knolls on which stood the several villages,\nthe ocean was in possession: right across the island were sweeping the\nstorm-lashed waves of the Zuyder Zee!\n\n\nXII\n\nThough they all were filled with punch-begotten Dutch courage, not\none of them but Krelis--as they stood together looking out over what\nshould have been marsh-land and what was angry sea--thought even for\na moment of getting homeward before daylight should come again and\nthe gale should break away. And even Krelis would not have been for\nfacing such danger at an ordinary time: but just then his soul and body\nwere in commotion, and over the black stormy water he saw visions of\nGeert beckoning him to those red lips of hers, and firing him with the\nsparkle of her flashing eyes.\n\n\"It's a bit of sea,\" he said lightly, \"but if one of you will lend a\nhand at an oar with me we'll manage it easily. Just here it's baddish.\nBut a stiff pull of a hundred yards will fetch us into smoother water\nunder the lee of the graveyard, and beyond that we'll be a little under\nthe lee of the Kerkehof--and then another spurt of stiff pulling will\nfetch us home. Geert will steer, and we can count on her to steer well.\nI wouldn't have risked it with Marretje at the tiller--but I've got\nanother sort of a wife now. Which of you'll come along?\"\n\nThere was a dead silence at that, for every one of the young fellows\nstanding there knew that to take a boat out into that water meant a\nfight for life at every inch of the way.\n\n\"Well, since you're all so modest,\" Krelis went on with a laugh, \"I'll\npick out big Jan here to pull with me--and no offence to the rest of\nyou, for we all know that not another man on Marken pulls so strong an\noar.\"\n\nIt was old Jan himself who told me this, and he said that when Krelis\nchose him that way there was nothing for him to do but to say that he'd\ngo. But he said that he went pale at the thought of what was before\nhim, and would have given anything in the world to get out of the job.\nAll the others spoke up against their trying it; and that, he said,\nwhile it scared him still more--for they all, in spite of the punch\nthat was in them, spoke very seriously--helped him to go ahead. It\nwould be something to talk about afterward, he thought, that he had\ndone what everybody else was afraid to do. And when the others found\nthat he and Krelis were not to be shaken, they set themselves to\nbringing a strong boat across from the other side of the village and\ngetting it into the water--in a smooth place under the lee of one of\nthe houses--and lashing a lantern fast into its bows.\n\nWhen Krelis and Jan went back to the tavern to fetch Geert there was\nanother outcry. All the women got around Geert and declared that she\nshould not go. But Geert was ready always for any bit of daredeviltry,\nand the readier when anybody tried to hold her back from it--and then\nthe way that Krelis looked at her would have taken her with him through\nthe very gates of hell. She only laughed at the other women, and made\nthem help her to put on the oil-skin hat and coat that Krelis fetched\nfor her to keep her dry against the pelting rain. And she laughed still\nlouder when she was rigged out in that queer dress--and what with her\nsparkling eyes and her splendid colour was so bewitching under the big\nhat that Krelis snatched a kiss from her and swore that at last he had\na wife just to his mind.\n\nAll the company, muffled in shawls and cloaks, went along with them to\nthe water-side to see them start; and because there was no commotion\nin the quiet nook where the boat was lying, and the darkness hid the\ntumbling waves beyond, most of them thought that the only danger ahead\nfor Geert and the others was a thorough drenching--and were disposed to\nmake fun of this queer wedding-journey on which they were bound. But\nthe young men who had launched the boat knew better, and they tried\nonce more to make Krelis give over his purpose--or, at least, to wait\nuntil the moon should rise a little and thin the clouds. And all the\nanswer that they got was a laugh from Geert and a joking invitation\nfrom Krelis to come across to the Kesbeurt in the morning and join him\nin a glass of grog.\n\nKrelis was to pull stroke, and so big Jan got into the boat ahead of\nhim--with his heart fairly down in his boots, he told me--and then\nKrelis got in; and last of all Geert took her seat in the stern, and\nas she gripped the tiller steadily gave the order to shove off. With\na strong push the young men gave the boat a start that sent it well\nout from the shore, and then the oars bit into the water and they were\nunder way.\n\nOne of the old women whom I talked with was of the wedding-party, and\ndown there by the shore that night, and she told me that they all\ncheered and laughed for a minute as the boat with the lantern in her\nbows shot off from the land. The thought of danger, she said, was quite\nout of their minds. Right in front of them, less than a quarter of a\nmile away, they saw the lights of the houses in the Kesbeurt shining\nbrightly, and plainly setting the course for Geert to steer; and they\nknew that the two strongest men on Marken were at the oars. What they\nall were laughing about, she said, was that anybody should be going\nfrom the one village to the other in a boat--and that it should be a\nwedding-journey, too!\n\nBut it was only for a moment that their laughter lasted. The instant\nthat the boat was out of the sheltered smooth water they all knew that\nnot by one chance in a thousand could she live to fetch across. By the\nlight of the lantern fixed in her bows they saw plainly the wild tumult\nof the sea around her--that caught her and seemed to stand her almost\nstraight on end as Geert held her strongly against the oncoming waves.\nThe old woman said that a thrill of horror ran through them all as they\nrealized what certainly must happen. By a common impulse down they\nall went on their knees on the sodden ground, with the rain pelting\nthem--and she heard some one cry out in the darkness: \"Old Jaap's curse\nis upon them! May God pity and help them and have mercy on their souls!\"\n\n[Illustration: OLD JAAP]\n\n\nXIII\n\nOld Jan, who alone knew it, told me the rest of the story--but speaking\nslowly and unwillingly, as though it all still were fresh before him\nand very horribly real.\n\nHe said that when the boat lifted as that first sea struck her it was\nplain enough what was likely to happen to them--for they could not put\nabout to make the shore again without swamping, and with such a sea\nrunning they were pretty certain to swamp quickly if they went on. But\nKrelis was not the sort to give in, and he shouted over his shoulder:\n\"I've got you into a scrape, Jan; but if we can pull up under the lee\nof the graveyard there's a chance for us still.\" And then he called to\nGeert: \"Now you can show what stuff you're made of, Geert. Steer for\nthe graveyard--and for God's sake hold her straight to the sea!\" As for\nGeert, she was as cool as the best man could have been, and she steered\nas well as any man could have steered. The light from the lantern shone\nfull in her face, and old Jan said that her eyes kept on sparkling and\nthat her colour never changed.\n\nWith that tremendous wind sweeping down on them, and with the waves\nbutting against the boat, and throwing her head up every instant, even\nJan and Krelis--and they were the best oarsmen on Marken--could make\nonly snail's way. But it heartened them to find that they made any way\nat all--as they could tell that they were doing by seeing the lights\nashore crawling past them--and so they lashed away with their oars and\nfound a little hope growing again. Presently Krelis called out: \"The\nwater's getting smoother, Jan. Another fifty yards and we'll be all\nright!\"\n\nThat was true. They were creeping up steadily under the lee of the\ngraveyard, and the closer they got to it the more would it break the\nforce of the waves. If they could reach it they would be safe.\n\nJust as Krelis spoke, the boat struck against something so sharply that\nshe quivered all over and lost way. Neither of the men dared to turn\neven for an instant; nor could their turning have done any good--all\nthat they could do was to row on. But Geert could look ahead, and the\nlantern in the bows cast a little circle of light upon the furious\nsea. As she peered over their shoulders a strange look came into her\nface, Jan said, and then she spoke in a voice strained and strange:\n\"It's a coffin,\" she said, \"and I see another one a little farther on.\nThe sea is washing away the graveyard--as it did that time long ago!\"\nAnd then the coffin went past them, so close that it struck against and\nnearly unshipped Krelis's oar.\n\nJan said that he trembled all over, and that a cold sweat broke out on\nhim. He felt himself going sick and giddy, and fell to wondering what\nwould happen should he be unable to keep on pulling--and how long it\ntook a man to drown. Then--but because of a ringing in his ears the\nvoice seemed to come faintly from very far away--he heard Krelis cry\nout cheerily: \"Pull, Jan! If we're getting among the coffins we'll be\nsafe in a dozen strokes more!\"\n\nIt was at that instant that a great wave lifted the bow of the boat\nhigh out of the water, and as she fell away into the trough of the sea\nshe struck again--but that time with a crash that had in it the sound\nof breaking boards. Jan knew that they must have struck the other\ncoffin that Geert had seen, and he was sure that the boat was stove in\nand in another moment would fill and sink from under them.\n\nFor what seemed a whole age to him there was a grinding and a crunching\nbeneath the keel; and then, as the boat swung free again, he saw Geert\ngo chalk-pale suddenly--as she stood peering eagerly forward--and\nheard her give a great wild cry. And then her color rushed back into\nher cheeks and her eyes glittered as she called out in a strong voice\nresolutely: \"It's Marretje come to take you from me, Krelis--but she\nsha'n't, she sha'n't! You never really were her lover--and you always\nwere and always shall be mine! And I hate her and I'll get the better\nof her dead just as I hated her and got the better of her alive!\" And\nwith that Geert let go her hold upon the tiller and sprang forward and\nclasped Krelis in her arms.\n\nJan could not tell clearly what happened after that. All that he was\nsure of was the sight for an instant, tossing beside the boat in the\ncircle of light cast by the lantern, of a lidless coffin in which lay\nwrapped in her white shroud the dead golden-haired Marretje--and then\nthe boat broached to and went over, and there was nothing about him\nbut blackness and the tumultuous waves. As he went down into a hollow\nof the sea he felt the ground beneath his feet, and that put courage\ninto him to make a fight for life. Struggling against the gale, and\nagainst waves which grew smaller as he battled on through them, he went\nforward with a heart-breaking slowness; and the strength was clean gone\nout of him when he won his way at last up the lee side of the little\nmound--and dropped down at full length there, in safe shelter amidst\nthe graves.\n\n\"And Geert and Krelis?\" I asked.\n\n\"With her arms tight about him there was no chance for either of them,\"\nhe answered. And then he went on, speaking very solemnly: \"The word\nthat was truth had been spoken against them. They perished in the wrath\nof the Zuyder Zee!\"\n\n\n\n\nA Duluth Tragedy\n\n\nI\n\n[Illustration]\n\nJutting out from the rocky coast, a sand spit nearly seven miles\nlong, Minnesota Point is as a strong arm stretched forth to defend\nthe harbour of Duluth against the storms which breed in the frozen\nNorth and come roaring down Lake Superior. Wisconsin Point, less than\nhalf its length, almost meets it from the other shore. Between the\ntwo is the narrow inlet through which in old times came the Canadian\nvoyageurs--on their way across Saint Louis Bay and up the windings of\nthe Saint Louis River to Pond du Lac, twenty miles farther westward.\nThat was in the fur-trading days of little sailing-vessels and\nbirch-bark canoes. Now, close to its shoulder, the Point is cut by a\ncanal through which the great black steamships come and go.\n\nFive-and-twenty years ago--before the canal was thought of, and when\nthe Duluth of the present, with its backing of twenty thousand miles\nof railway, was a dream just beginning to be realized--Minnesota Point\nwas believed to have a great future. Close to its shoulder a town site\nwas staked out, and little wooden houses were built at a great rate.\nCorner lots on that sand spit were at a premium. The \"boom\" was on. The\nsmash of '73 knocked the bottom out of everything for a while. When\ngood times came again the town site moved on westward a half-mile or\nso and settled itself on the mainland. The little houses on the Point\nwere out of the running and were taken up by Swedes--who were content,\nas Americans were not, to live a few steps away from the strenuous\ncentre of that inchoate metropolis. That time the \"boom\" was a genuine\none. The new city had come to stay. In course of time, to meet its\ngrowing trade requirements, the canal was cut which made the Point an\nisland--and after that the Point was dead for good and all.\n\nNowadays it is only in summer that a little life, other than that\nof its few inhabitants, shows itself on Minnesota Point--when\ncamping-parties and picnic-parties go down by three miles of shaky\ntramway to Oatka Beach. During all the rest of the year that sandy\nbarren, with its forlorn decaying houses and its dreary growth of pines\nstunted by the harsh lake winds, is forgotten and desolate. Now and\nthen is heard the cry of a gull flying across it slowly; and always\nagainst its outer side--with a thunderous crash in times of storm, in\ntimes of calm with a sad soft lap-lapping--surge or ripple the deathly\ncold waters of Lake Superior: waters so cold that whoever drowns in\nthem sinks quickly--not to rise again (as the drowned do usually), but\nfor all time, in chill companionship with the countless dead gathered\nthere through the ages, to be lost and hidden in those icy depths.\n\nThe ghastly coldness of the water in which it is merged seems to\nhave numbed the Point and reconciled it to its bleak destiny. It has\naccepted its fate: recognizing with a grim indifference that its\nonce glowing future has vanished irrevocably into what now is the\nhopelessness of its nearly forgotten past.\n\n\nII\n\n[Illustration]\n\nGeorge Maltham, wandering out on the Point one Sunday morning in the\nearly spring-time--he had just come up from Chicago to take charge of\nthe Duluth end of his father's line of lake steamers and was lonely\nin that strange place, and was the more disposed to be misanthropic\nbecause he had a headache left over from the previous wet night at\nthe club--came promptly to the conclusion that he never had struck a\nplace so god-forsakenly dismal. Aside from his own feelings, there was\neven more than usual to justify this opinion. The day was grey and\nchill. A strong northeast wind was blowing that covered the lake with\nwhite-caps and that sent a heavy surf rolling shoreward. A little ice,\nleft from the spring break-up, still was floating in the harbour. Under\nthese conditions the Point was at its cheerless worst.\n\nMaltham had crossed the canal by the row-boat ferry. Having mounted\nthe sodden steps and looked about him for a moment--in which time his\nconclusion was reached as to the Point's god-forsaken dismalness--he\nwas for abandoning his intended explorations and going straight-away\nback to the mainland. But when he turned to descend the steps the boat\nhad received some waiting passengers--three church-bound Swedish women\nin their Sunday clothes--and had just pushed off. That little turn of\nchance decided him. After all, he said to himself, it did not make\nmuch difference. What he wanted was a walk to rid him of his headache;\nand the Point offered him, as the rocky hill-sides of the mainland\nconspicuously did not, a good long stretch of level land.\n\nBefore him extended an absurdly wide street--laid out in magnificent\nexpectation of the traffic that never came to it--flanked in\nfar-reaching perspective by the little houses which sprang up in such\na hurry when the \"boom\" was on. In its centre was the tramway, its\nroad-bed laid with wooden planks. The dingy open tram-car, in which\nthe church-bound Swedish women had come up to the ferry, started away\ncreakingly while he stood watching it. That was the only sight or sound\nof life. For some little time, in the stillness, he could hear the\ndriver addressing Swedish remarks of an encouraging or abusive nature\nto his mule.\n\nTaking the planked tramway in preference to the rotten wooden sidewalks\nfull of pitfalls, Maltham walked on briskly for a mile or so--his\nheadache leaving him in the keen air--until the last of the little\nhouses was passed. There the vast street suddenly dribbled off into\na straggling sandy road, which wound through thickets of bushy white\nbirch and a sparse growth of stunted pines. The tramway, along which\nhe continued, went on through the brush in a straight line. The\nPoint had narrowed to a couple of hundred yards. Through rifts in\nthe tangle about him he could see heaps of storm-piled drift-wood\nscattered along the lake-side beach--on which the surf was pounding\nheavily. On the harbour side the beach was broken by inthrusts of\nsedgy swamp. Presently he came to a sandy open space in which, beside\na weather-worn little wooden church, was a neglected graveyard that\nseemed to give the last touch of dreariness to that dismal solitude.\n\nThe graveyard was a waste of sand, save where bushy patches of birch\nhad sprung up in it from wind-borne seeds. Swept by many storms, the\nsandy mounds were disappearing. Still marking the graves were a few\nshabby wooden crosses and a dozen or so of slanting or fallen wooden\nslabs. Once these short-lived monuments had been painted white and had\nborne legends in black lettering. But only a Swedish word or a Swedish\nname remained here and there legible--for the sun and the wind and the\nrain had been doing their erasing work steadily for years. One slab\nalone stood nearly upright and retained a few partly decipherable lines\nin English. But even on that Maltham could make out only the scattered\nwords: \"Sacred.... Ulrica.... Royal House of Sweden ... ever beloved\n... of Major Calhoun Ashley,\" and a date that seemed to be 1879.\n\nHis headache had gone, but it had left him heavy and dejected. That\nfragmentary epitaph increased his sombreness. Even had he been in a\ncheerful mood he could not have failed to perceive the pathetic irony\nof it all. There was more than the ordinary cruelty of death and\nforgetfulness, he thought, about that grave so desolate of one who\nhad been connected--it did not matter how--with a \"royal house,\" and\nwho was described in those almost illegible lines as \"ever beloved.\"\nThat was human nature down to the hard pan, he thought; and with a\nhalf-smile and a half-sigh over the fate of that poor dead Ulrica he\nturned away from the graveyard and walked on. Half-whimsically he\nwondered if he had reached the climax of the melancholy which brooded\nover that dreary sand spit. As he stated the case to himself, short of\nfinding a man lying murdered among the birch-bushes it was not likely\nthat he would strike anything able to raise that graveyard's hand!\n\nThe murdered man did not materialize, and the next out-of-the-way\nsight that he came across--when he had walked on past the dingy and\nforgotten-looking little church--was a big ramshackling wooden house\nof such pretentious absurdity that his first glimpse of it fairly made\nhim laugh. Its square centre was a wooden tower of three stories,\nbattlemented, flanked by two battlemented wings. A veranda ran along\nthe lower floor, and above the veranda was a gallery. Some of the\nwindows were boarded over; others had scraps of carpet stuck into their\nglassless gaps--and all had Venetian shutters (singularly at odds with\nthe climate of that region) hanging dubiously and with many broken\nslats. The paint had weathered away, and bricks had fallen from the\nchimney-tops--a loss which gave to the queer structure, in conjunction\nwith lapses in its wooden battlements, a sadly broken-crested air.\nAs a whole, it suggested a badly done caricature of an old-fashioned\nSouthern homestead--of which the essence of the caricature was finding\nit in that bleak Northern land.\n\n\nIII\n\n[Illustration]\n\nMaltham had come to a full stop in front of this absurd dwelling, which\nwas set a little back from the road in a dishevelled enclosure, and\nas he stood examining in an amused way its various eccentricities he\nbecame aware that from one of the lower windows a man was watching him.\n\nThis was disconcerting, and he turned to walk on. But before he had\ngone a dozen steps the front door opened and the man came outside.\nHe was dressed in shabby grey clothes with a certain suggestion of a\nmilitary cut about them; but in spite of his shabbiness he had the look\nof a gentleman. He was sixty, or thereabouts, and seemed to have been\nwell set up when he was younger--before the slouch had settled on his\nshoulders and before he had taken on a good many unnecessary inches\nabout his waist. From where he stood on the veranda he hailed Maltham\ncordially:\n\n\"Won't yo' come in, suh? I have obsehved youah smiles at my old house\nheah-- No, no, yo' owe me no apology, suh,\" he went on quickly, as\nMaltham attempted a confused disclaimer. \"Yo' ah quite justified in\nlaughing, suh, at my foolish fancy--that went wrong mainly because the\nYankee ca'pentah whom I employed to realize it was a hopelessly damned\nfool. But it was a creditable sentiment, suh, which led me to desiah\nto reproduce heah in godfo'saken Minnesotah my ancestral home in the\ngrand old State of South Cahrolina--the house that my grandfatheh built\ntheah and named Eutaw Castle, as I have named its pore successeh,\nbecause of the honorable paht he bo' in the battle of Eutaw Springs.\nThe result, I admit, is a thing to laugh at, suh--but not the ideah.\nNo, suh, not the ideah! But come in, suh, come in! The exterioh of\nEutaw Castle may be a failuah; but within it, suh, yo' will find in\nthis cold No'th'en region the genuine wahm hospitality of a true\nSouthe'n home!\"\n\nMaltham perceived that the only apology which he could offer for\nlaughing at this absurd house--the absurdity of which became rather\npathetic, he thought, in view of its genesis--was to accept its owner's\ninvitation to enter it. Acting on this conclusion, he turned into the\nenclosure--the gate, hanging loosely on a single hinge, was standing\nopen--and mounted the veranda steps.\n\nAs he reached the top step his host advanced and shook hands with\nhim warmly. \"Yo'ah vehy welcome, suh,\" he said; and added, after\nputting his hand to a pocket in search of something that evidently\nwas not there: \"Ah, I find that I have not my cahd-case about me.\nYo' must pehmit me to introduce myself: Majoh Calhoun Ashley, of the\nConfedehrate sehvice, suh--and vehy much at youahs.\"\n\nMaltham started a little as he heard this name, and the small shock so\nfar threw him off his balance that as he handed his card to the Major\nhe said: \"Then it was your name that I saw just now in--\" And stopped\nshort, inwardly cursing himself for his awkwardness.\n\n\"That yo' saw in the little graveyahd, on the tomb of my eveh-beloved\nwife, suh,\" the Major replied--with a quaver in his voice which\ncompelled Maltham mentally to reverse his recent generalizations. The\nMajor was silent for a moment, and then continued: \"Heh grave is not\nyet mahked fitly, suh, as no doubt yo' obsehved. Cihcumstances oveh\nwhich I have had no control have prevented me from erecting as yet a\nsuitable monument oveh heh sacred remains. She was my queen, suh\"--his\nvoice broke again--\"and of a line of queens: a descendant, suh, from a\ncollateral branch of the ancient royal house of Sweden. I am hoping,\nI am hoping, suh, that I shall be able soon to erect oveh heh last\nresting-place a monument wo'thy of heh noble lineage and of hehself. I\nam hoping, suh, to do that vehy soon.\"\n\nThe Major again was silent for a moment; and then, pulling himself\ntogether, he looked at Maltham's card--holding it a long way off\nfrom his eyes. \"Youah name is familiar to me, suh,\" he said,\n\"though fo' the moment I do not place it, and I am most happy to\nmake youah acquaintance. But come in, suh, come in. I am fo'getting\nmyself--keeping you standing this way outside of my own doah.\"\n\nHe took Maltham cordially by the arm and led him through the doorway\ninto a wide bare hall; and thence into a big room on the right, that\nwas very scantily furnished but that was made cheerful by a rousing\ndrift-wood fire. Over the high mantel-piece was hung an officer's sword\nwith its belt. On the buckle of the belt were the letters C. S. A.\nExcepting this rather pregnant bit of decoration, the whitewashed walls\nwere bare.\n\nThe Major bustled with hospitality--pulling the bigger and more\ncomfortable of two arm-chairs to the fire and seating Maltham in it,\nand then bringing out glasses and a bottle from a queer structure of\nunpainted white pine that stood at one end of the room and had the look\nof a sideboard gone wrong.\n\n\"At the moment, suh,\" he said apologetically, \"my cellah is badly\nfuhnished and I am unable to offeh yo' wine. But if yo' have an\nappreciative taste fo' Bourbon,\" he went on with more assurance, \"I am\nsatisfied that yo' will find the ahticle in this bottle as sound as any\nthat the noble State of Kentucky eveh has produced. Will yo' oblige me,\nsuh, by saying when!\"\n\nNot knowing about the previous wet night, and its still lingering\nconsequences, the promptness with which Maltham said \"when\" seemed to\ndisconcert the Major a little--but not sufficiently to deter him from\nfilling his own glass with a handsome liberality. Holding it at a level\nwith his lips, he turned toward his guest with the obvious intention of\ndrinking a toast.\n\n\"May I have a little water, please?\" put in Maltham.\n\n\"I beg youah pahdon, suh. I humbly beg youah pahdon,\" the Major\nanswered. \"I am not accustomed to dilute my own liquoh, and I most\nthoughtlessly assumed that yo' would not desiah to dilute youahs. I\ntrust that yo' will excuse my seeming rudeness, suh. Yo' shall have at\nonce the bevehrage which yo' desiah.\"\n\nWhile still apologizing, the Major placed his glass on the table and\nwent to the door. Opening it he called: \"Ulrica, my child, bring a\npitcheh of fresh wateh right away.\"\n\nAgain Maltham gave a little start--as he had done when the Major had\nintroduced himself. In a vague sub-conscious way he felt that there\nwas something uncanny in thus finding living owners of names which he\nhad seen, within that very hour, scarcely legible above an uncared-for\ngrave. But the Major, talking on volubly, did not give him much\nopportunity for these psychological reflections; and presently there\nwas the sound of footsteps in the hall outside, and then the door\nopened and the owner of the grave-name appeared.\n\n\nIV\n\n[Illustration]\n\nBecause of the odd channel in which his thoughts were running, Maltham\nhad the still odder fancy for an instant that the young girl who\nentered the room was the dead Ulrica of whom the Major had spoken--\"a\nqueen, and of a line of queens.\" And even when this thought had\npassed--so quickly that it was gone before he had risen to his feet to\ngreet her--the impression of her queenliness remained. For this living\nwoman bearing a dead name might have been Aslauga herself: so tall and\nstately was she, and so fair with that cold beauty of the North of\nwhich the soul is fire. Instinctively he felt the fire, and knew that\nit still slumbered--and knew, too, that in the fulness of time, being\nawakened, it would glow with a consuming splendour in her dark eyes.\n\nAll this went in a flash through his mind before the Major said:\n\"Pehmit me, Mr. Maltham, to present yo' to my daughteh, Miss Ulrica\nAshley.\" And added: \"Mr. Maltham was passing, Ulrica, and did me the\nhoneh to accept my invitation to come in.\"\n\nShe put down the pitcher of water and gave Maltham her hand. \"It\nwas very kind of you, sir,\" she said gravely. \"We do not have many\nvisitors, and my father gets lonely with only me. It was very kind of\nyou, sir, indeed.\" She spoke with a certain precision, and with a very\nslight accent--so slight that Maltham did not immediately notice it.\nWhat he did notice, with her first words, was the curiously thrilling\nquality of her low-pitched and very rich voice.\n\n\"And don't you get lonely too?\" he asked.\n\n\"Why no,\" she answered with a little air of surprise. And speaking\nslowly, as though she were working the matter out in her mind, she\nadded: \"With me it is different, you see. I was born here on the Point\nand I love it. And then I have the house to look after. And I have my\nboat. And I can talk with the neighbours--though I do not often care\nto. Father cannot talk with them, because he does not know Swedish as\nI do. When he wants company he has to go all the way up to town. You\nsee, it is not the same with us at all.\" And then, as though she had\nexplained the matter sufficiently, she turned to the Major and asked:\n\"Do you want anything more, father?\"\n\n\"Nothing mo', my child--except that an extra place is to be set at\ntable. Mr. Maltham will dine with us, of co'se.\"\n\nAt this Maltham protested a little; but presently yielded to Ulrica's,\n\"You will be doing a real kindness to father if you will stay, Mr.\nMaltham,\" backed by the Major's peremptory: \"Yo' ah my prisoneh, suh,\nand in Eutaw Castle we don't permit ouah prisonehs to stahve!\" The\nmatter being thus settled, Ulrica made a little formal bow and left the\nroom.\n\n\"The wateh is at youah sehvice, suh,\" said the Major as the door\nclosed behind her. \"I beg that yo' will dilute youah liquoh to youah\nliking. Heah's to youah very good health, suh--and to ouah betteh\nacquaintance.\" He drank his whiskey appreciatively, and as he set down\nhis empty glass continued: \"May I ask, suh, if yo' ah living in Duluth,\noh mehly passing through? I ventuah to ask because a resident of this\ntown sca'cely would be likely to come down on the Point at this time of\nyeah.\"\n\n\"I began to be a resident only day before yesterday,\" Maltham answered.\n\"I've come to take charge here of our steamers--the Sunrise Line.\"\n\n\"The Sunrise Line!\" repeated the Major in a very eager tone. \"The\nbiggest transpo'tation line on the lakes. The line of which that great\ncapitalist Mr. John L. Maltham is president. And to think, suh, that I\ndid not recognize youah name!\"\n\n\"John L. Maltham is my father,\" the young man said.\n\n\"Why, of co'se, of co'se! I might have had the sense to know that as\nsoon as I looked at youah cahd. This is a most fo'tunate meeting,\nMr. Maltham--most fo'tunate for both of us. I shall not on this\noccasion, when yo' ah my guest, enteh into a discussion of business\nmattehs. But at an eahly day I shall have the honeh to lay befo' yo'\nconvincing reasons why youah tehminal docks should be established heah\non the Point--which a beneficent Providence cleahly intended to be\nthe shipping centeh of this metropolis--and prefehrably, suh, as the\nmeahest glance at a chaht of the bay will demonstrate, heah on my land.\nYo' will have the first choice of the wha'ves which I have projected;\nand I may even say, suh, that any altehrations which will affo'd mo'\nconvenient accommodations to youah vessels still ah possible. Yes, suh,\nthe matteh has not gone so fah but that any reasonable changes which\nyo' may desiah may yet be made.\"\n\nRemembering the sedgy swamps beside which he had passed that morning,\nMaltham was satisfied that the Major's concluding statement was well\nwithin the bounds of truth. But he was not prepared to meet off-hand so\nradical a proposition, and while he was fumbling in his mind for some\nsort of non-committal answer the Major went on again.\n\n\"It is not fo' myself, suh,\" he said, \"that I desiah to realize this\nmagnificent undehtaking. Living heah costs little, and what I get\nfrom renting my land to camping pahties and fo' picnics gives me all\nI need. And I'm an old man, anyway, and whetheh I die rich oh pore\ndon't matteh. It's fo' my daughteh's sake that I seek wealth, suh, not\nfo' my own. That deah child of mine is heh sainted motheh oveh again,\nMr. Maltham--except that heh motheh's eyes weh blue. That is the only\ndiffehrence. And beside heh looks she has identically the same sweet\nnatuah, suh--the same exquisite goodness and beauty of haht. When my\ngreat loss came to me,\" the Major's voice broke badly, \"it was my love\nfo' that deah child kept me alive. It breaks my haht, suh, to think of\ndying and leaving heh heah alone and pore.\"\n\nMaltham had got to his bearings by this time and was able to frame a\nreasonably diplomatic reply. \"Well, perhaps we'd better not go into\nthe matter to-day,\" he said. \"You see, our line has traffic agreements\nwith the N. P. and the Northwestern that must hold for the present,\nanyway. And then I've only just taken charge, you know, and I must look\naround a little before I do anything at all. But I might write to my\nfather to come up here when he can, and then he and you could have a\ntalk.\"\n\nThe Major's look of eager cheerfulness faded at the beginning of\nthis cooling rejoinder, but he brightened again at its end. \"A talk\nwith youah fatheh, suh,\" he answered, \"would suit me down to the\nground-flo'. An oppo'tunity to discuss this great matteh info'mally\nwith a great capitalist has been what I've most desiahed fo' yeahs.\nBut I beg youah pahdon, suh. I am fo'getting the sacred duties of\nhospitality. Pehmit me to fill youah glass.\"\n\nIt seemed to pain him that his guest refused this invitation; but,\nfinding him obdurate, he kept the sacred duties of hospitality in\nworking order by exercising them freely upon himself. \"Heah's to\nthe glorious futuah of Minnesotah Point, suh!\" he said as he raised\nhis glass--and it was obvious that he would be off again upon the\nexploitation of his hopelessly impossible project as soon as he put it\ndown. Greatly to Maltham's relief, the door opened at that juncture and\nUlrica entered to call them to dinner; and he was still more relieved,\nwhen they were seated at table, by finding that his host dropped\nbusiness matters and left the glorious future of Minnesota Point\nhanging in the air.\n\nAt his own table, indeed, the Major was quite at his best. He told good\nstories of his army life, and of his adventurous wanderings which ended\nwhen he struck Duluth just at the beginning of its first \"boom\"; and\nvery entertaining was what he had to tell of that metropolis in its\nembryotic days.\n\nBut good though the Major's stories were, Maltham found still more\ninteresting the Major's daughter--who spoke but little, and who seemed\nto be quite lost at times in her own thoughts. As he sat slightly\nturned toward her father he could feel her eyes fixed upon him; and\nmore than once, facing about suddenly, he met her look full. When this\nhappened she was not disconcerted, nor did she immediately look away\nfrom him--and he found himself thrilled curiously by her deeply intent\ngaze. Yet the very frankness of it gave it a quality that was not\nprecisely flattering. He had the feeling that she was studying him in\nmuch the same spirit that she would have studied some strange creature\nthat she might have come across in her walks in the woods. When he\ntried to bring her into the talk he did not succeed; but this was\nmainly because the Major invariably cut in before he could get beyond\na direct question and a direct reply. Only once--when her father made\nsome reference to her love for sailing--was her reserve, which was not\nshyness, a little broken; and the few words that she spoke before the\nMajor broke in again were spoken so very eagerly that Maltham resolved\nto bring her back to that subject when he could get the chance. Knowing\nsomething of the ways of women, he knew that to set her to talking\nabout anything in which she was profoundly interested would lower her\nguard at all points--and so would enable him to come in touch with her\nthoughts. He wanted to get at her thoughts. He was sure that they were\nnot of a commonplace kind.\n\n\nV\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\nWhen the dinner was ended he made a stroke for the chance that he\nwanted. \"Will you show me your boat?\" he asked. \"I'm a bit of a sailor\nmyself, and I should like to see her very much indeed.\"\n\n\"Oh, would you? I am so glad!\" she answered eagerly. And then added\nmore quietly: \"It is a real pleasure to show you the _Nixie_. I am very\nfond of her and very proud of her. Father gave her to me three years\nago--after he sold a lot over in West Superior. And it was very good of\nhim, because he does not like sailing at all. Will you come now? It is\nonly a step down to the wharf.\"\n\nThe Major declared that he must have his after-dinner pipe in comfort,\nand they went off without him--going out by a side door and across a\nhalf-acre of kitchen-garden, still in winter disorder, to the wharf\non the bay-side where the _Nixie_ was moored. She was a half-decked\ntwenty-foot cat-boat, clean in her lines and with the look of being\nable to hold her own pretty well in a blow.\n\n\"Is she not beautiful?\" Ulrica asked with great pride. And presently,\nwhen Maltham came to a pause in his praises, she added hesitatingly:\n\"Would you--would you care to come out in her for a little while?\"\n\n\"Indeed I would!\" he answered instantly and earnestly.\n\n\"Oh, thank you, thank you!\" Ulrica exclaimed. \"I do want you to see how\nwonderfully she sails!\"\n\nThe boat was moored with her stern close to the wharf and with her bow\nmade fast to an outstanding stake. When they had boarded her Ulrica\ncast off the stern mooring, ran the boat out to the stake and made fast\nwith a short hitch, and then--as the boat swung around slowly in the\nslack air under the land--set about hoisting the sail. She would not\npermit Maltham to help her. He sat aft, steadying the tiller, watching\nwith delight her vigorous dexterity and her display of absolute\nstrength. When she had sheeted home and made fast she cast off the\nbow mooring, and then stepped aft quickly and took the tiller from his\nhand. For a few moments they drifted slowly. Then the breeze, coming\nover the tree-tops, caught them and she leaned forward and dropped the\ncentreboard and brought the boat on the wind. It was a leading wind,\ndirectly off the lake, that enabled them to make a single leg of it\nacross the bay. As the boat heeled over Maltham shifted his seat to the\nweather side. This brought him a little in front of Ulrica, and below\nher as she stood to steer. From under the bows came a soft hissing and\nbubbling as the boat slid rapidly along.\n\n\"Is she not wonderful?\" Ulrica asked with a glowing enthusiasm. \"Just\nsee how we are dropping that big sloop over yonder--and the Nixie not\nhalf her size! But the _Nixie_ is well bred, you see, and the sloop is\nnot. She is as heavy all over as the _Nixie_ is clean and fine. Father\nsays that breeding is everything--in boats and in horses and in men.\nHe says that a gentleman is the finest thing that God ever created. It\nwas because the Southerners all were gentlemen that they whipped the\nYankees, you know.\"\n\n\"But they didn't--the Yankees whipped them.\"\n\n\"Only in the last few battles, father says--and those did not count, so\nfar as the principle is concerned,\" Ulrica answered conclusively.\n\nMaltham did not see his way to replying to this presentation of the\nmatter and was silent. Presently she went on, with a slight air of\napology: \"I hope you did not mind my looking at you so much while we\nwere at dinner, Mr. Maltham. You see, except father, you are the only\ngentleman I ever have had a chance to look at close, that way, in my\nwhole life. Father will not have much to do with the people living up\nin town. Most of them are Yankees, and he does not like them. None of\nthem ever come to see us. The only people I ever talk with are our\nneighbours; and they are just common people, you know--though some of\nthem are as good as they can be. And as father always is talking about\nwhat a gentleman ought to be or ought not to be it is very interesting\nreally to meet one. That was the reason why I stared at you so. I hope\nyou did not mind.\"\n\n\"I'm glad I interested you, even if it was only as a specimen of a\nclass,\" Maltham answered. \"I hope that you found me a good specimen.\"\nHer simplicity was so refreshing that he sought by a leading question\nto induce a farther exhibition of it. \"What is your ideal of a\ngentleman?\" he asked.\n\n\"Oh, just the ordinary one,\" she replied in a matter-of-fact tone.\n\"A gentleman must be absolutely brave, and must kill any man who\ninsults him--or, at least, must hurt him badly. He must be absolutely\nhonest--though he is not bound, of course, to tell all that he knows\nwhen he is selling a horse. He must be absolutely true to the woman he\nloves, and must never deceive her in any way. He must not refuse to\ndrink with another gentleman unless he is willing to fight him. He must\nprotect women and children. He must always be courteous--though he may\nbe excused for a little rudeness when he has been drinking and so is\nnot quite himself. He must be hospitable--ready to share his last crust\nwith anybody, and his last drink with anybody of his class. And he must\nknow how to ride and shoot and play the principal games of cards. Those\nare the main things. You are all that, are you not?\"\n\nShe looked straight at him as she asked this question, speaking still\nin the same entirely matter-of-fact tone. But Maltham did not look\nstraight back at her as he answered it. The creed that she set forth\nhad queer articles in it, but its essentials were searching--so\nsearching that his look was directed rather indefinitely toward the\nhorizon as he replied, a little weakly perhaps: \"Why, of course.\"\n\nShe seemed to be content with this not wholly conclusive answer;\nbut as he was not content with it himself, and rather dreaded a\ncross-examination, he somewhat suddenly shifted the talk to a subject\nthat he was sure would engross her thoughts. \"How splendidly the\n_Nixie_ goes!\" he said. \"She is a racer, and no mistake!\"\n\n\"Indeed she is!\" Ulrica exclaimed, with the fervour upon which he had\ncounted. \"She is the very fastest boat on the bay. And then she is so\nweatherly! Why, I can sail her into the very eye of the wind!\"\n\n\"Yes, she has the look of being weatherly. But she wouldn't be if you\ndidn't manage her so well. Who taught you how to sail?\"\n\n\"It was old Gustav Bergmann--one of the fishermen here on the Point,\nyou know. And he said,\" she went on with a little touch of pride, \"that\nhe never could have made such a good sailor of me if I had not had it\nin my blood--because I am a Swede.\"\n\n\"But you are an American.\"\n\nUlrica did not answer him immediately, and when she did speak it was\nwith the same curiously slow thoughtfulness that he had observed when\nshe was explaining the difference between her father's life and her own\nlife in the solitude of Minnesota Point.\n\n\"I do not think I am,\" she said. \"I do not know many American women,\nbut I am not like any American woman I know. You see, I am very like\nmy mother. Father says so, and I feel it--I cannot tell you just how I\nfeel it, but I do. For one thing, I am more than half a savage, father\nsays--like some of the wild Indians he has known. He is in fun, of\ncourse, when he says that; but he really is right, I am sure. Did you\never want to kill anybody, Mr. Maltham?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Maltham with a laugh, \"I never did. Did you?\"\n\nUlrica remained grave. \"Yes,\" she answered, \"and I almost did it, too.\nYou see, it was this way: A man, one of the campers down on the Point,\nwas rude to me. He was drunk, I think. But I did not think about his\nbeing drunk, and that I ought to make allowances for him. Somehow, I\nhad not time to think. Everything got red suddenly--and before I knew\nwhat I was doing I had out my knife. The man gave a scream--not a cry,\nbut a real scream: he must have been a great coward, I suppose--and\njumped away just as I struck at him. I cut his arm a little, I think.\nBut I am not sure, for he ran away as hard as he could run. I was very\nsorry that I had not killed him. I am very sorry still whenever I think\nabout it. Now that was not like an American woman. At least, I do not\nknow any American woman who would try to kill a man that way because\nshe really could not help trying to. Do you?\"\n\n\"No,\" Maltham answered, drawing a quick breath that came close to being\na gasp. Ulrica's entire placidity, and her argumentative manner, had\nmade her story rather coldly thrilling--and it was quite thrilling\nenough without those adjuncts, he thought.\n\nShe seemed pleased that his answer confirmed her own opinion. \"Yes, I\nthink I am right about myself,\" she went on. \"I am sure that it is my\nSwedish blood that makes me like that. We do not often get angry, you\nknow, we Swedes: but when we do, our anger is rage. We do not think\nnor reason. Suddenly we see red, as I did that day, and we want to\nstrike to kill. It is queer, is it not, that we should be made like\nthat?\"\n\nMaltham certainly was discovering the strange thoughts that he had\nset himself to search for. They rather set his nerves on edge. As she\nuttered her calm reflection upon the oddity of the Swedish temperament\nhe shivered a little.\n\n\"I am afraid that you are cold,\" she said anxiously. \"Shall we go\nabout? Father will not like it if I make you uncomfortable.\"\n\n\"I am not at all cold,\" he answered. \"And the sailing is delightful.\nDon't let us go about yet.\"\n\n\"Well, if you are quite sure that you are not cold, we will not. I do\nwant to take you down to the inlet and show you what a glorious sea is\nrunning on the lake to-day. It is only half a mile more.\"\n\nThey sailed on for a little while in silence. The swift send of the\nboat through the water seemed so to fill Ulrica with delight that she\ndid not care to speak--nor did Maltham, who was busied with his own\nconfused thoughts. Suddenly some new and startling concepts of manhood\nand of womanhood had been thrust into his mind. They puzzled him,\nand he was not at all sure that he liked them. But he was absolutely\nsure that this curious and very beautiful woman who had uttered them\ninterested him more profoundly than any woman whom ever he had known.\nThat fact also bothered him, and he tried to blink it. That he could\nnot blink it was one reason why his thoughts were confused. Presently,\nbeing accustomed to slide along the lines of least resistance, he gave\nup trying. \"After all,\" was his conclusion, so far as he came to a\nconclusion, \"it is only for a day.\"\n\n\nVI\n\n[Illustration]\n\nAs they neared the inlet the water roughened a little and the wind grew\nstronger. Ulrica eased off the sheet, and steadied it with a turn\naround the pin. In a few minutes more they had opened the inlet fairly,\nand beyond it could see the lake--stretching away indefinitely until\nits cold grey surface was lost against the cold grey sky. A very heavy\nsea was running. In every direction was the gleam of white-caps. On the\nbeaches to the left and right of them a high surf was booming in. They\nran on, close-hauled, until they were nearly through the inlet and were\ncome into a bubble of water that set the boat to dancing like a cork.\nNow and then, as she fell off, a wave would take her with a thump and\ncover them with a cloud of spray.\n\nThe helm was pulling hard, but Ulrica managed it as easily and as\nknowingly as she had managed the setting of the sail--standing with\nher feet well apart, firmly braced, her tall figure yielding to the\nboat's motion with a superb grace. Suddenly a gust of wind carried\naway her hat, and in another moment the great mass of her golden hair\nwas blowing out behind her in the strong eddy from the sail. Her face\nwas radiant. Every drop of her Norse blood was tingling in her veins.\nAslauga herself never was more gloriously beautiful--and never more\njoyously drove her boat onward through a stormy sea.\n\nBut Maltham did not perceive her beauty, nor did he in the least share\nher glowing enthusiasm. He had passed beyond mere nervousness and was\nbeginning to be frightened. It seemed to him that she let the boat fall\noff purposely--as though to give the waves a chance to buffet it, and\nthen to show her command over them by bringing it up again sharply into\nthe wind; and he was certain that if they carried on for another five\nminutes, and so got outside the inlet, they would be swamped.\n\n\"Don't you think that we had better go about?\" he asked. It did not\nplease him to find that he had not complete control over his voice.\n\n\"But it is so glorious,\" she answered. \"Shall we not keep on just a\nlittle way?\"\n\n\"No!\" he said sharply. \"We must go about at once. We are in great\ndanger as it is.\" He felt that he had turned pale. In spite of his\nstrong effort to steady it, his voice shook badly and also was a little\nshrill.\n\n\"Oh, of course,\" she replied, with a queer glance at him that he did\nnot at all fancy; \"if you feel that way about it we will.\" The radiance\ndied away from her face as she spoke, and with it went her intoxication\nof delight. And then her expression grew anxious as she looked about\nher, and in an anxious tone she added: \"Indeed you are quite right, Mr.\nMaltham. We really are in a bad place here. I ought never to have come\nout so far. We must try to get back at once. But it will not be easy. I\nam not sure that the _Nixie_ will stand it. I am sure, though, that she\nwill do her best--and I will try to wear her as soon as I see a chance.\"\n\nShe luffed a little, that she might get more sea-room to leeward, and\nscanned the oncoming waves closely but without a sign of fear. \"Now I\nthink I can do it,\" she said presently, and put up the helm.\n\nIt was a ticklish move, for they were at the very mouth of the inlet,\nbut the _Nixie_ paid off steadily until she came full into the trough\nof the sea. There she wallowed for a bad ten seconds. A wave broke\nover the coaming of the cockpit and set it all aflow. Maltham went\nstill whiter, and began to take off his coat. It was with the greatest\ndifficulty that he kept back a scream. Then the boat swung around to\nher course--Ulrica's hold upon the tiller was a very steady one--and in\nanother minute they were sliding back safely before the wind. In five\nminutes more they were in the smooth water of the bay.\n\nUlrica was the first to speak, and she spoke in most contrite tones.\n\"It was very, very wrong in me to do that, Mr. Maltham,\" she said. \"And\nit was wicked of me, too--for I have given my solemn promise to father\nthat I never will go out on the lake when it is rough at all. Please,\nplease forgive me for taking you into such danger in such a foolish\nway. It was touch and go, you know, that we pulled through. Please say\nthat you forgive me. It will make me a little less wretched if you do.\"\n\nThe danger was all over, and Maltham had got back both his color and\nhis courage again. \"Why, it was nothing!\" he said. \"Or, rather, it was\na good deal--for it gave me a chance to see what a magnificent sailor\nyou are. And--and it was splendidly exciting out there, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Wasn't it!\" she echoed rapturously. \"And oh,\" she went on, \"I _am_ so\nglad that you take it that way! It is a real load off my mind! Will you\nplease take the tiller for a minute while I put up my hair?\"\n\nAs she arranged the shining masses of her golden hair--her full\nround arms uplifted, the wind pressing her draperies close about\nher--Maltham watched her with a burning intentness. The glowing\nreaction following escape from mortal peril was upon him and the tide\nof his barely saved life was running full. In Ulrica's stronger nature\nthe same tide may have been running still more impetuously. For an\ninstant their eyes met. She flushed and looked away.\n\nHe did not speak, and the silence seemed to grow irksome to her. She\nbroke it, but with a perceptible effort, as she took the tiller again.\n\"Do you know,\" she said, \"I did think for a minute that you were\nscared.\" She laughed a little, and then went on more easily: \"And if\nyou really had been scared I should have known, of course, that you\nwere not a gentleman! Was it not absurd?\"\n\nHer words roused him, and at the same time chilled him. \"Yes, it was\nvery absurd,\" he answered not quite easily. And then, with presence of\nmind added: \"But I _was_ scared, and badly scared--for you. I did not\nsee how I possibly could get you ashore if the boat filled.\"\n\n\"You could not have done it--we should have been drowned,\" Ulrica\nreplied with quiet conviction. \"But because you are a gentleman it was\nnatural, I suppose, for you not to think about yourself and to worry\nthat way about me. You could not help it, of course--but I like it, all\nthe same.\"\n\nMaltham reddened slightly. Instead of answering her he asked: \"Would\nyou mind running up along the Point and landing me on the other side of\nthe canal? I want to hurry home and get into dry things--and that will\nsave me a lot of time, you know.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she cried in a tone of deep concern, \"are you not coming back\nwith me? I shall have a dreadful time with father, and I am counting on\nyou to help me through.\"\n\nMaltham had foreseen that trouble with the Major was impending, and\nwanted to keep out of it. He disliked scenes. \"Of course, if you want\nme to, I'll go back with you,\" he answered. And added, drawing himself\ntogether and shivering a little, \"I don't believe that I shall catch\nmuch cold.\"\n\n\"What a selfish creature I am!\" Ulrica exclaimed impetuously. \"Of\ncourse you must hurry home as fast as you can. What I shall get from\nfather will not be the half of what I deserve. And to think of my\nthinking about your getting me off from a scolding at the cost of your\nbeing ill! Please do not hate me for it--though you ought to, I am\nsure!\"\n\nHaving carried his point, Maltham could afford to be amiable again. He\nlooked straight into her eyes, and for an instant touched her hand, as\nhe said: \"No, I shall not--hate you!\" His voice was low. He drawled\nslightly. The break gave to his phrase a telling emphasis.\n\nIt was not quite fair. He knew thoroughly the game that he was playing;\nwhile Ulrica, save so far as her instinct might guide her, did not know\nit at all. She did not answer him--and he was silent because silence\njust then was the right move. And so they went on without words until\nthey were come to the landing-place beside the canal. Even then--for\nhe did not wish to weaken a strong impression--he made the parting a\nshort one: urging that she also must hurry home and get on dry clothes.\nIt did not strike her, either then or later, that he would have shown\na more practical solicitude in the premises had he not made her come\nthree miles out of her way.\n\nIndeed, as she sailed those three miles back again, her mind was in\nno condition to work clearly. In a confused way, that yet was very\ndelightful, she went over to herself the events of that wonderful\nday--in which, as she vaguely realized, her girlhood had ended and her\nwomanhood had begun. But she dwelt most upon the look that he had given\nher when he told her, with the break in his phrase, that he would not\nhate her; and upon the touch of his hand at parting, and his final\nspeech, also with a break in it: \"I shall see you to-morrow--if you\ncare to have me come.\"\n\nAt the club that evening Maltham wrote a very entertaining letter\nto Miss Eleanor Strangford, in Chicago: telling her about the queer\nold Major and his half-wild daughter, and how the daughter had taken\nhim out sailing and had brought him back drenched through. He was a\nbeliever in frankness, and this letter--while not exhaustive--was\nof a sort to put him right on the record in case an account of his\nadventures should reach his correspondent by some other way. He would\nhave written it promptly in any circumstances. It was the more apposite\nbecause he had promised to write every Sunday to Miss Strangford--to\nwhom he was engaged.\n\n\nVII\n\n[Illustration]\n\nMaltham left his office early the next afternoon and went down the\nPoint again. He had no headache, the wind had shifted to the southward,\nand all about him was a flood of spring sunshine. Yet even under these\ncheerful conditions he found the Point rather drearily desolate. He\ngave the graveyard a wide berth when he came to it, and looked away\nfrom it. His desire was strong that he might forget where he had\nseen Ulrica's name for the first time. He was not superstitious,\nexactly; but his sub-consciousness that the direction in which he\nwas sliding--along the lines of least resistance--was at least\nquestionable, made him rather open to feelings about bad and good luck.\n\nBeing arrived at Eutaw Castle, he inferred from what the Major said\nand from what Ulrica looked that the domestic storm of the previous day\nhad been a vigorous one--and was glad that he had kept out of it. But\nit had blown over pretty well, and his good-natured chaff about their\nadventure swept away the few remaining clouds.\n\n\"It is vehy handsome of yo', suh,\" said the Major, \"to treat the matteh\nas yo' do. My daughteh's conduct was most inexcusable--fo' when she\ncahried yo' into that great dangeh she broke heh sacred wo'd to me.\"\n\n\"But it was quite as much my fault as hers,\" Maltham answered. \"I\nshould not have let her go. You see, the sailing was so delightfully\nexciting that we both lost our heads a little. Luckily, I got mine back\nbefore it was too late.\"\n\n\"Yo' behaved nobly, suh, nobly! My daughteh has told me how youah only\nthought was of heh dangeh, and how white yo' went when yo' realized\nyouah inability to save heh if the boat went down. Those weh the\nfeelings of a gentleman, suh, and of a vehy gallant gentleman--such as\nyo' suahly ah. Youah conduct could not have been fineh, Mr. Maltham,\nhad yo' been bo'n and bred in South Cahrolina. Suh, I can say no mo'\nthan that!\"\n\nUlrica took little part in the talk. Her eyes were dull and she moved\nlanguidly, as though she were weary. Not until her father left the\nroom--going to fetch his maps and charts, that he might demonstrate the\nPoint's glorious future--did she speak freely.\n\n\"I could not sleep last night, Mr. Maltham,\" she said hurriedly. \"I\nlay awake the whole night--thinking about what I had done, and about\nwhat you must think about me for doing it. If I had drowned you, after\nbreaking my word to father that way, it would have been almost murder.\nIt was very noble of you, just now, to say that it was as much your\nfault as it was mine. But it was not. It was my fault all the way\nthrough.\"\n\n\"But the danger was just as great for you as it was for me,\" Maltham\nanswered. \"You would have been drowned too, you know.\"\n\n\"Oh, that would not have counted. It would not have counted at all. I\nshould have got only what I deserved.\"\n\nMaltham came close to her and took her hand. \"Don't you think that it\nwould have counted for a good deal to _me_?\" he asked. Then he dropped\nher hand quickly and moved away from her as the Major re-entered the\nroom.\n\nInasmuch as he would have been drowned along with her, this speech was\nlacking in logic; but Ulrica, who was not on the lookout for logic\njust then, was more than satisfied with it. Suddenly she was elate\nagain. For the dread that had kept her wakeful had vanished: his second\nthoughts about the peril into which she had taken him had not set him\nagainst her--he still was the same! She could not answer him with her\nlips, but she answered him with her eyes.\n\nMaltham's feelings were complex as he saw the effect that his words\nhad upon her. He had made several resolutions not to say anything of\nthat sort to her again. Even if she did like flirting (as he had put\nit in his own mind) it was not quite the thing, under the existing\nconditions, for him to flirt with her. He resolutely kept the word\nflirting well forward in his thoughts. It agreeably qualified the\nentire situation. As he very well knew, Miss Strangford was not above\nflirting herself. But it was not easy to classify under that head\nUlrica's sudden change in manner and the look that she had given him.\nIn spite of himself, his first impression of her would come back and\nget in the way of the new impression that he very much wished to form.\nWhen he first had seen her--only the day before, but time does not\ncount in the ordinary way in the case of those who have been close to\nthe gates of death together--he had felt the fire that was in her, and\nhad known that it slumbered. After what he had just seen in her eyes he\ncould not conquer the conviction that the fire slumbered no longer and\nthat he had kindled its strong flame.\n\nNor did he wholly wish to conquer this conviction. It was thrillingly\ndelightful to think that he had gained so great a power over her, for\nall her queenliness, in so short a time. Over Miss Strangford--the\ncontrast was a natural one--he had very little power. That young lady\nwas not queenly, but she had a notable aptitude for ruling--and came\nby it honestly, from a father whose hard head and hard hand made him\nconspicuous even among Chicago men of affairs. It was her strength that\nhad attracted him to her; and the discovery that with her strength was\nsweetness that had made him love her. He was satisfied that she loved\nhim in return--but he could not fancy her giving him such a look as\nUlrica had just given him; still less could he fancy her whole being\nirradiated by a touch and a word.\n\nAnd so he came again to the same half-formed conclusion that he had\ncome to in the boat on the preceding day: he would let matters drift\nalong pleasantly a little farther before he set them as they should be\nwith a strong hand.\n\nThis chain of thought went through his mind while the Major was\nexhibiting the maps and expounding the Point's future; and his\nhalf-conclusion was a little hastened by the Major's abrupt stop, and\nsudden facing about upon him with: \"I feah, suh, that yo' do not quite\nfollow me. If I have not made myself cleah, suh, I will present the\nmatteh in anotheh way.\"\n\nMaltham shot a quizzical glance at Ulrica--which made her think that\nshe knew where his thoughts had been wool-gathering, and so brought\nmore light to her eyes--and answered with a becoming gravity: \"The fact\nis I didn't quite catch the point that you were making, Major, and I'll\nbe very much obliged if you'll take the trouble to go over it again.\"\n\n\"It is no trouble--it is a pleasuah, suh,\" the Major replied with an\nanimated affability. And with that he was off again, and ran on for\nan hour or more--until he had established the glorious future of\nMinnesota Point in what he believed to be convincing terms. \"When the\ntime to which I am looking fo'wa'd comes, Mr. Maltham, and it will come\nvehy soon, suh,\" he said in enthusiastic conclusion, \"it stands to\nreason that the fortunes of this great metropolis of the No'thwest will\nbe fo'eveh and unchangeably established. Only I must wahn yo', suh,\nthat we must begin to get ready fo' it right away. We must take time by\nthe fo'lock and provide at once--I say at once, suh--fo' the needs of\nthat magnificent futuah that is almost heah now!\"\n\nHe took a long breath as he finished his peroration, and then came down\nsmiling to the level of ordinary conversation and added: \"I feah, Mr.\nMaltham, that I pehmit my enthusiasm to get away with me a little. I\nfeah I may even boah yo', suh. I promise not to say anotheh wohd on\nthe subject this evening. And now, as it is only a little while befo'\nsuppeh, we cannot do betteh, suh, than to take a drink.\"\n\nMaltham had not intended to stay to supper. He even had intended not\nto. But he did--and on through the evening until the Major had to warn\nhim that he either must consent to sleep in Eutaw Castle or else\nhurry along up the Point before the ferry-boat stopped running for the\nnight. The Major urged him warmly to stay. Finding that his invitation\ncertainly would not be accepted, he went off for a lantern--and was\nrather put out when Maltham declined it and said that he could find his\nway very well by the light of the stars.\n\nActually, Maltham did not find his way very well by the light of the\nstars. Two or three times he ran against trees. Once--this was while he\nwas trying to give the graveyard a wide offing--he stumbled over a root\nand fell heavily. When he got up again he found that he had wrenched\nhis leg, and that every step he took gave him intense pain. But he was\nglad of his flounderings against trees, and of his fall and the keen\npain that followed it--for he was savage with himself.\n\nAnd yet it was not his fault, he grumbled. Why had the Major gone off\nthat way to hunt up a lantern--and so left them alone? Toward the end\nof his walk--his pain having quieted his excitement, and so lessened\nhis hatred of himself--he added much more lightly: \"But what does a\nsingle kiss amount to, after all?\"\n\n\nVIII\n\n[Illustration]\n\nIt was on a day in the early autumn that Maltham at last decided\ndefinitely--making effective his half-formed resolution of the\nspring-time--to stop drifting and to set things as they should be with\na strong hand. But he had to admit, even as he formed this resolution,\nthat setting things quite as they should be no longer was within his\npower.\n\nThe summer had gone quickly, most astonishingly quickly, he thought;\nand for the most part pleasantly--though it had been broken by\ncertain interludes, not pleasant, during which he had been even more\nsavage with himself than he had been during that walk homeward from\nEutaw Castle in the dark. But, no matter how it had gone, the summer\ndefinitely was ended--and so were his amusing sessions with the Major\nover the future of Minnesota Point, and his sails with Ulrica on the\nlake and about the bay. Ice already had begun to form in the sheltered\nparts of the harbour, and the next shift of wind into the North would\nclose the port for the winter by freezing everything hard and fast. All\nthe big ships had steamed away eastward. On the previous day he had\ndespatched the last vessel of his own line. His work for the season\nwas over, and he was ready to return to Chicago. In fact, he had his\nberth engaged on that night's train. Moreover, in another month he was\nto be married: in her latest letter Miss Strangford had fixed the day.\nThen they were going over to the Riviera, and probably to Egypt. In\nthe spring they were coming back again, but not to Duluth nor even to\nChicago. He was to take charge of the Eastern office of the line, and\ntheir home would be in New York. These various moves were so definite\nand so final as to justify him in saying to himself, as he did say to\nhimself, that the Duluth episode was closed.\n\nHe had hesitated about going down to Eutaw Castle to say good-bye, but\nin the end had perceived that the visit was a necessity. The Major\nand Ulrica knew that he was to leave Duluth when navigation was\nclosed for the winter--indeed, of late, Ulrica had referred to that\nfact frequently--but he had not confided to them the remainder of his\nrather radical programme. He meant to do that later by letter--from\nthe Riviera or from Egypt. In the mean time, until he was married and\nacross the Atlantic, it was essential to keep unbroken the friendly\nrelations which had made his summer--even with its bad interludes--so\nkeenly delightful to him; and to go away without paying a farewell\nvisit he knew would be to risk a rupture that very easily might lead\non to a catastrophe. Moreover, as he said to himself, there need not\nbe anything final about it. Even though the harbour did freeze, the\nrailways remained open--and it was only sixteen hours from Chicago to\nDuluth by the fast train. To suggest that he might be running up again\nsoon would be a very simple matter: and would not be straining the\ntruth, for he knew that the pull upon him to run up in just that way\nwould be almost irresistibly strong.\n\nIn fact, the pull was of such strength that all of his not excessive\nwill power had to be exerted to make him go away at all--at least,\nto go away alone. Very many times he had thought of the possibility\nof reversing his programme completely: of making his wedding journey\nwith Ulrica, and of writing from some far-off place to Miss Strangford\nthat he had happened to marry somebody else and that she was free.\nBut each time that he had considered this alternative he had realized\nthat its cost would come too high: a break with his own people, the\nloss of the good berth open to him in New York, the loss of his share\nof Miss Strangford's share of the grain-elevators and other desirable\nproperties which would come to her when her father died. But for these\npractical considerations, as he frequently and sorrowingly had assured\nhimself, he would not have hesitated for a moment--being satisfied\nthat, aside from them, such a reversal of his plans would be better in\nevery way. For he knew that while Miss Strangford had and Ulrica had\nnot his formal promise to marry her, it was Ulrica who had the firmer\nhold upon his heart; and he also knew that while Ulrica would meet his\ndecision against her savagely--and, as he believed, feebly--with her\npassion, Miss Strangford would meet the reverse of that decision calmly\nand firmly with her strength. The dilemma so nearly touched the verge\nof his endurance that he even had contemplated evading it altogether\nby shooting himself. But he had not got beyond contemplation. For that\nsort of thing he was lacking in nerve.\n\nIt was because facing what he knew was a final parting--even though\nUlrica would not know it--would be so bitter hard for him that he had\nhesitated about making his visit of good-bye. But when he had decided\nthat it was a necessity--that the risk involved in not making it\noutweighed the pain that it would cost him--he came about again: adding\nto his argument, almost with a sob, that he could not go away like\nthat, anyhow--that he _must_ see her once more!\n\nAnd so he went down the Point again, knowing that he went for the last\ntime--and on much the same sort of a day, as it happened, as that on\nwhich his first visit had been made: a grey, chill day, with a strong\nwind drawing down the lake that tufted it with white-caps and that sent\na heavy surf booming in upon the shore. He had no headache, but he had\na heartache that was still harder to bear.\n\nHe had intended to take the tram-car--that he might hurry down to the\nCastle, and get through with what he had to do there, and so away\nagain quickly. But when he had crossed the canal he let the car go\noff without him--for the good reason that the meeting and the parting\nmight not come so soon. And for this same reason he walked slowly,\nirresolutely. Once or twice he halted and almost turned back. It all\nwas very unlike his brisk, assured advance on that far back day--ages\nbefore, it seemed to him--when he went down the Point for the first\ntime.\n\nAs he went onward, slowly, he was thinking about that day: how it had\nbeen without intention that he turned eastward instead of westward\nwhen he started on his walk; how a whim of the moment had led him to\ncross the canal; how the mere chance of the three church-bound women\nhurrying into the ferry-boat had prevented his immediate return. He\nfell to wondering, dully, what \"chance\" is, anyway--this force which\nwith a grim humour uses our most unconsidered actions for the making or\nthe unmaking of our lives; and the hopeless puzzle of it all kept his\nmind unprofitably employed until he had passed the last of the little\nhouses, and had gone on through the stunted pines, and so was come to\nthe desolate graveyard.\n\nHe did not shun the graveyard, as he had shunned it all the summer\nlong. The need for that was past--now that, in reality, Ulrica's name\nhad come to be to him a name upon a grave. For a while he stood with\nhis arms resting on the broken fence, looking before him in a dull way\nand feeling a dull surprise because he found the dismal place still\nprecisely as he remembered it. That in so very long a time it should\nnot have become more ruinous seemed to him unreasonable. Then he walked\non past the little church, still slowly and hesitatingly, and so came\nat last to the Castle. Oddly enough, the Major was standing again at\nthe same lower window, and saw him, and came out to welcome him. For\na moment he had a queer feeling that perhaps it still was that first\nday--that he might have been dozing in the pine woods, somewhere, and\nthat the past summer was all a dream.\n\nThe Major was beaming with friendliness. \"Aha, Masteh Geo'ge, I'm glad\nto see yo' and to congratulate yo'!\" he said heartily. And he gave\nMaltham a cordial dig in the ribs as he added: \"Yo' ah a sly dog, a\nvehy sly dog, my boy, to keep youah secret from us! But I happened to\nbe up in town yestehday, and by the mehest chance I met Captain Todd,\nof youah boat, and he told me why yo' ah going back to Chicago in such\na huhy, suh! It is a great match, a magnificent match that yo' ah\nmaking, Geo'ge, and I congratulate yo' with all my haht. I should be\nglad of the oppo'tunity to congratulate Miss Strangfo'd also. Fo' I am\nnot flattehing yo', Geo'ge, when I tell yo' that she could not have\nfound a betteh husband had she gone to look fo' him in South Cahrolina.\nSuh, I can say no mo' than that!\"\n\nThe Major's speech was long enough, fortunately, for Maltham to get\nover the shock of its beginning before he had to answer it. But even\nwith that breathing space his answer was so lame that the Major had to\ninvent an excuse for its lack of heartiness. \"I don't doubt that afteh\nyouah chilly walk, Geo'ge, yo' ah half frozen,\" he said. \"Come right in\nand have a drink. It will do yo' good, suh. It will take the chill out\nof youah bones!\"\n\nMaltham was glad to accept this invitation, and the size of the drink\nthat he took did the Major's heart good. \"That's right, Geo'ge!\" he\nsaid with great approval. \"A South-Cahrolinian couldn't show a betteh\nappreciation of good liquoh than that!\" He raised his glass and\ncontinued: \"I drink, suh, to Miss Strangfo'd's health, and to youahs.\nMay yo' both have the long lives of happiness that yo' both desehve!\"\n\nHe put down his empty glass and added: \"I will call Ulrica. She will\nbe glad to see yo' and to offeh yo' heh congratulations.\" He paused\nfor a moment, and then went on in a less cheerful tone: \"But I must\nwahn yo', Geo'ge, that she has a bad headache and is not quite hehself\nto-day--and so may not manifest that wahm co'diality in regahd to youah\npresent and futuah happiness that she suahly feels. I confess, Geo'ge,\"\nthe Major continued anxiously, \"I am not quite comfo'table about heh.\nShe seems mo' out of so'ts than a meah headache ought to make heh. And\nfo' the last month and mo', as yo' may have obsehved youahself, she\nhas not seemed to be hehself at all. I don't mind speaking this way\nfrankly to yo', Geo'ge, fo' yo' know how my haht is wrapped up in heh.\nAs I once told yo', it was only my love fo' that deah child that kept\nme alive when heh motheh left me,\" the Major's voice was very unsteady,\n\"and it is God's own truth that if anything went wrong with heh; if--if\nI weh to lose heh too, Geo'ge, I suahly should want to give right up\nand die. I could not live without heh--I don't think that I could live\nwithout heh fo' a single day!\"\n\nThere were tears in the Major's eyes as he spoke, and his last word\nwas almost a sob. Maltham was very pale. He did not attempt an answer.\n\n\"Thank yo', Geo'ge,\" the Major went on presently. \"I see by youah looks\nthat I have youah sympathy. I am most grateful to yo' fo' it, most\ngrateful indeed!\" In a moment he added: \"Hahk! She's coming now! I heah\nheh step outside. Hahk how heavy and slow it is--and she always as\nlight on heh feet as a bird! To heah heh walk that way almost breaks my\nhaht!\" And then he checked himself suddenly, and tried to look rather\nunusually cheerful as Ulrica entered the room.\n\n\nIX\n\n[Illustration]\n\nBeing braced to meet some sort of a storm, Maltham was rather put about\nby not encountering it. Ulrica certainly was looking the worse for her\nheadache--her eyes were duller than usual, and there were dark marks\nunder them, and she was very pale; but she did not seem to be at all\nexcited, and the greeting that she gave him was out of the ordinary\nonly in that she did not offer him her hand. He drew a quick breath,\nand the tense muscles of his mind relaxed. If she were taking it in\nthat quiet way, he thought, he had worked himself into heroics for\nnothing. And then, quite naturally, he felt a sharp pang of resentment\nbecause she did take it so quietly. Her calmness ruffled his self-love.\n\nAs she remained silent, making no reference to Maltham's engagement,\nthe Major felt that the proprieties of the case were not being attended\nto and prompted her. \"I have been wishing Geo'ge joy and prospehrity,\nmy deah,\" he said. \"Have yo' nothing to say to him youahself about his\ncoming happiness?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she answered slowly, \"I have a great deal to say to him--so much\nthat I am going to carry him off in the _Nixie_ to say it.\" She turned\nto Maltham and added: \"You will come with me for a last sail, will you\nnot?\"\n\nMaltham hesitated, and then answered doubtfully: \"Isn't it a little\ncold for sailing to-day? Your father says that you are not feeling\nwell. I do think that it will be better not to go--unless you really\ninsist upon it, of course.\"\n\n\"Yo' mustn't think of such a thing!\" the Major struck in peremptorily.\n\"The weatheh is like ice. Yo' will catch yo' death of cold!\"\n\n\"It is no colder, father, than that day when I took George out in\nthe _Nixie_ for the first time--and it will do my head good,\" Ulrica\nanswered. And added, to Maltham: \"I do insist. Come!\"\n\nAgainst the Major's active remonstrance, and against Maltham's passive\nresistance, she carried her point. \"Come!\" she said again--and led\nMaltham out by the side door into the ragged garden. There she left him\nfor a moment and returned to her father--who was standing in a very\nmelancholy way before the fire.\n\n\"Do not mind, father,\" she said. \"It is the best thing for me--it is\nthe only thing for me.\"\n\nHe looked at her inquiringly, puzzled by her words and by her vehement\ntone. Suddenly she put her arms around his neck and kissed him.\n\"Remember always, father, that I have loved you with my whole heart\nfor almost my whole life long. And remember always,\" she went on with\na curiously savage earnestness, \"that I am loving you with my whole\nheart--with every bit of it--to-day!\"\n\n\"I am suah yo' ah, my daughteh,\" the Major answered, very huskily.\n\nShe kissed him again, holding him tight in her arms. Then she unclasped\nher arms with a sudden quick energy and swiftly left the room.\n\nShe led Maltham silently to the boat, and silently--when she had cast\noff the mooring--motioned to him to enter it. He found this silence\nominous, and tried to break it. But the commonplace words which he\nwanted to speak would not come.\n\nAnd then, as he sat in the stern and mechanically steadied the tiller\nwhile she hoisted the sail, the queer feeling again came over him that\nit still was that wonderful first day. This feeling grew stronger as\nall that he remembered so well was repeated: Ulrica's rapid movement\naft to the tiller; his own shifting of his seat; her quick loosing of\nthe centreboard as the wind caught them; and then the heeling over of\nthe boat, and her steady motion, and the bubbling hiss of the water\nbeneath the bow. It all so lulled him, so numbed his sense of time and\nfact, that suddenly he looked up in her face and smiled--just as he\nhad done on that first day.\n\n[Illustration: \"'I HAVE LOVED YOU WITH MY WHOLE HEART'\"]\n\nBut the look in Ulrica's eyes killed his smile, and brought him back\nwith a sharp wrench to reality. Her eyes no longer were dull. They were\nglowing--and they seemed to cut into him like knives.\n\n\"Well,\" she asked, \"have you anything to say for yourself?\"\n\n\"No,\" he answered, \"except that fate has been too strong for me.\"\n\n\"Fate sometimes is held accountable for a great deal,\" she said dryly,\nbut with a catch in her voice.\n\nThey were silent again, and for a long while. The boat was running down\nthe bay rapidly--even more rapidly, the wind being much stronger, than\non that first day. They could hear, as they had not heard then, the\nsurf crashing upon the outer beach of the Point.\n\nThe silence became more than he could stand. \"Can you forgive me?\" he\nasked at last.\n\nUlrica looked at him with a curious surprise. \"No,\" she answered quite\ncalmly. \"Think for a moment about what you have done and about what you\nintend to do. Do you not see that it is impossible?\"\n\n\"But I love you!\" he cried eagerly. \"I love you more than I can tell.\nIt is not my will that is separating us--it is fate!\"\n\nHer look softened for an instant as he began, but as he ended it\nhardened again. She did not answer him. A strong gust of wind heeled\nthe boat farther over. They were going at a slashing rate. Before them\nthe inlet was opening. The booming of the surf was very loud.\n\nHe saw that his words had taken hold upon her, and repeated them: \"I\ndo love you, Ulrica--and, oh, you don't know how very wretched I have\nbeen! More than once in this past month I have been very near killing\nmyself.\"\n\nShe gave him a searching look, and seemed satisfied that he spoke the\ntruth. \"I am glad that you have wanted to kill yourself,\" she said\nslowly and earnestly. They were at the mouth of the inlet. As she\nspoke, she luffed sharply and they entered it close-hauled.\n\n\"Yes,\" she repeated, speaking still more earnestly, \"I am very glad of\nthat. It makes me feel much easier in my mind about what I am going to\ndo.\"\n\nHer tone startled him. He looked up at her quickly and anxiously. \"What\nare you going to do?\" he asked.\n\n\"Drown you,\" she answered simply.\n\nFor an instant he did not take in the meaning of her words. Then his\nface became very white, though he tried to smile. His voice shook as\nhe said: \"I do not think that this is a good time for joking.\" The\nboat was biting her way into the wind sharply, plunging and bucketing\nthrough the partly spent waves which came in from outside.\n\n\"You know that I am not joking,\" Ulrica answered very quietly. \"I am\ngoing to drown you, and to drown myself too. I have thought it all out,\nand this seems the best thing to do. It is the best for father,\" her\nvoice trembled, \"and it is the best,\" she went on again, firmly, \"for\nme. As for you, it does not matter whether it is the best for you or\nnot--it is what you deserve. For you are a liar and a traitor--a liar\nand a traitor to me, and to that other woman too!\" As she spoke these\nlast words her calmness left her, and there was the ring of passionate\nanger in her tone. The fire that she had been smothering, at last was\nin full blaze.\n\nThey were at the very mouth of the inlet. The white-capped surface\nof the lake swelled and tossed before them. The boat was wallowing\nheavily.\n\nMaltham's paleness changed to a greenish-grey. He uttered a shrill\nscream--a cry of weakly helpless terror. \"Put about! For God's sake put\nabout!\" he gasped. \"We shall be drowned!\"\n\nFor answer, she hauled the sheet a little and brought the boat still\ncloser into the wind--heading straight out into the lake. \"I told\nyou once that the _Nixie_ could sail into the wind's eye,\" she said,\ncoolly. \"Now she is doing it. Does she not go well?\"\n\nAt that, being desperate, he rallied a little. Springing to his feet,\nbut standing unsteadily, he grasped the tiller and tried to shift the\nhelm. Ulrica, standing firmly, laid her hand flat against his breast\nand thrust him away savagely--with such force that he reeled backward\nand fell, striking against the combing and barely missing going over\nthe side.\n\n\"You fool!\" she exclaimed. \"Do you not see that it is too late?\" She\ndid not trouble herself to look at him. Her gaze was fixed in a keen\necstasy on the great oncoming waves.\n\nWhat she said was true--it was too late. They were fairly out on the\nopen lake, and all possibility of return was gone. To try to go about\nwould be to throw the _Nixie_ into the trough of the sea--and so send\nher rolling over like a log. At the best, the little boat could live in\nthat surge and welter for only a very few minutes more.\n\nMaltham did not attempt to rise. His fall had hurt him, and what little\nwas left of his spirit was cowed. He lay in a miserable heap, uttering\nlittle whimpering moans. The complaining noise that he made annoyed\nher. For the last time she looked at him, burning him for an instant\nwith her glowing eyes. \"Silence, you coward!\" she cried, fiercely--and\nat her strong command he was still. Then her look was fixed on the\ngreat oncoming waves again, and she cast him out from her mind.\n\nEven in her rage--partly because of it--Ulrica felt in every drop of\nher Norse blood the glow and the thrill of this glorious battle with\ngreat waters. The sheer delight of it was worth dying for--and so\nrichly worth living through to the very last tingling instant that she\nsteered with a strong and a steady hand. And again--as she stood firmly\non the tossing boat, her draperies blown close about her, her loosened\nhair streaming out in golden splendour--she was Aslauga's very self.\nSorrow and life together were ending well for her--in high emotion\nthat filled and satisfied her soul. Magnificent, commanding, defiant,\nshe sailed on in joyful triumph: glad and eager to give herself\nstrongly to the strong death-clasp of the waves.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nThe Death-Fires of Les Martigues\n\n\nI\n\n\"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!\"\n\nThat is one of our old sayings here in Provence. I used to laugh at it\nwhen I was young. I do not laugh at it now. When those words come into\nmy heart, and they come often, I go by the rough hard way that leads\nupward to Notre Dame de la Garde until I come to the Crime Cross--it is\na wearying toil for me to get up that steep hill-side, I am so stiff\nand old now--and there I cast fresh stones upon the heap at the foot of\nthe cross. Each stone cast there, you know, is a prayer for forgiveness\nfor some hidden crime: not a light fault, but a crime. The stones must\nbe little stones, yet the heap is very wide and high--though every\nwinter, when the great mistrals are blowing across the \u00c9tang de Berre,\nthe little stones are whirled away down the hill-side. I do not know\nhow this custom began, nor when; but it is a very old custom with us\nhere in Les Martigues.\n\nOnce in every year I go up to the Crime Cross by night. This is on\nAll Souls Eve. First I light the lamp over Magali's breast where she\nlies sleeping in the graveyard: going to the graveyard at dusk, as the\nothers do, in the long procession that creeps up thither from the three\nparts of our town--from Jonqui\u00e8res, and the Isle, and Ferri\u00e8res--to\nlight the death-fires over the dear dead ones' graves. I go with the\nvery first, as soon as the sun is down. I like to be alone with Magali\nwhile I light the little lamp that will be a guide for her soul through\nthat night when souls are free; that will keep it safe from the devils\nwho are free that night too. I do not like the low buzzing of voices\nwhich comes later, when the crowd is there, nor the broken cries and\nsobs. And when her lamp is lit, and I have lit my mother's lamp, I\nhurry away from the graveyard and the moaning people--threading my\nsteps among the graves on which the lights are beginning to glimmer,\nand through the oncoming crowd, and then by the lonely path through the\nolive-orchards, and so up the stony height until I come at last to the\nCrime Cross--panting, aching--and my watch begins.\n\n[Illustration: MARIUS]\n\nUp on that high hill-side, open to the west, a little of the dying\ndaylight lingers. Eastward, like a big black mirror, lies the great\n\u00e9tang; and far away across its still waters the mountain chain\nabove Berre and Rognac rises purple-grey against the darker sky.\nIn the west still are faint crimson blotches, or dashes of dull\nblood-red--reflected again, and made brighter, in the \u00c9tang de Caronte:\nthat stretches away between the long downward slopes of the hills,\non which stone-pines stand out in black patches, until its gleaming\nwaters merge into the faint glow upon the waters of the Mediterranean.\nAbove me is the sanctuary of Notre Dame de la Garde, a dark mass on\nthe height above the olive-trees: of old a refuge for sinful bodies,\nand still a refuge where sinful souls may seek grace in prayer from\ntheir agony. And below me, on the slope far downward, is the graveyard:\nwhere the death-fires multiply each moment, as more and more lamps\nare lighted, until at last it is like a little fallen heaven of tiny\nstars. Only in its midst is an island of darkness where no lamps are.\nThat is where the children lie together: the blessed innocents who have\ndied sinless, and who wander not on All Souls Eve because when sweet\ndeath came to them their pure spirits went straight home to God. And\nbeyond the graveyard, below it, is the black outspread of the town: its\nblackness deepened by a bright window here and there, and by the few\nstreet lamps, and by the bright reflections which shine up from the\nwaters of its canals.\n\nSeeing all this--yet only half seeing it, for my heart is full of other\nthings--I sit there at the foot of the Crime Cross in the darkness,\nprayerful, sorrowful, while the night wears on. Sometimes I hear\nfootsteps coming up the rocky path, and then the shadowy figure of\na man or of a woman breaks out from the gloom and suddenly is close\nbeside me--and I hear the rattle of little stones cast upon the heap\nbehind me, on the other side of the cross. Presently, the rite ended,\nwhoever it is fades back into the gloom again and passes away. And I\nknow that another sinful soul has been close beside my sinful soul for\na moment: seeking in penitent supplication, as I am seeking, rest\nin forgiveness for an undiscovered crime. But I am sure that none of\nthem sees--as I see in the gloom there always--a man's white face on\nwhich the moonlight is shining, and beyond that white face the glint\nof moonlight on a raging sea; and I am sure that on none of their\nblackened souls rests a burden as heavy as that which rests on mine.\n\nI am very weary of my burden, and old and broken too. It is my comfort\nto know that I shall die soon. But, also, the thought of that comfort\ntroubles me. For I am a lone man, and childless. When I go, none\nof Magali's race, none of my race, will be left alive here in Les\nMartigues. Our death-fires will not be lighted. We shall wander in\ndarkness on All Souls Eve.\n\n\nII\n\n\"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!\"\n\nMy old mother, God rest her, said that to me when first she began to\nsee that my love was set on Magali--and saw, too, that I was winning\nfrom Magali the love that belonged to Jan, who had her promise.\n\n\"It is an old man's lifetime, mother,\" I said, \"since a wolf has been\nseen near Les Martigues.\" And I laughed and kissed her.\n\n\"Worse than a wolf is a heart that covets what it may not have,\nMarius,\" she answered. \"Magali is as good as Jan's wife, and you know\nit. For a year she has been promised to him. She is my dead sister's\nchild, and she is in my care--and in your care too, because you and\nshe and I are all that is left of us, and you are the head of our\nhouse, the man. You are doing wickedness in trying to take her away\nfrom Jan--and Jan your own close friend, who saved your life out of the\nsea. The match is a good match for Magali, and she was contented with\nit until you--living here close beside her in your own house--began\nto steal away her heart from him. It is rascal work, Marius, that you\nare doing. You are playing false as a house-father and false as a\nfriend--and God help me that I must speak such words to my own son!\nThat is why I say, and I say it solemnly, 'God keep you from the\nshe-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!' That desire has no right\nto be in your heart, Marius. Drag it out of your heart and cast it\naway!\"\n\nBut I only laughed and kissed her again, and told her that I would\ntake good care of myself if a she-wolf tried to eat me--and so I went\naway, still laughing, to my fishing in the Gulf of Fos.\n\nBut I did not laugh when I was alone in my boat, slipping down the\n\u00c9tang de Caronte seaward. What she had said had made me see things\nclearly which until then had been half hid in a haze. We had slipped\ninto our love for each other, Magali and I, softly and easily--just as\nmy boat was slipping down the \u00e9tang. Every day of our lives we were\ntogether, in the close way that housemates are together in a little\nhouse of four rooms. Before I got up in the morning I could hear her\nmoving near me, only a thin wall between us; and her movements, again,\nwere the last sounds that I heard at night. She waited on me at my\nmeals. She helped my mother to mend my clothes--the very patches on my\ncoat would bring to my mind the sight of her as she sat sewing at night\nbeside the lamp. We were as close together as a brother and a sister\ncould be; and in my dulness I had fancied for a long while that what I\nhad felt for her was only what a brother would feel.\n\nWhat first opened my eyes a little was the way that I felt about it\nwhen she gave her promise to Jan. For all our lives Jan and I had been\nclose friends: and most close since that day when the squall struck our\nboats, as we lay near together, and I went overboard, and Jan--letting\nhis own boat take its chances--came overboard after me because he knew\nthat I could not swim. It was by a hair's-breadth only that we were not\ndrowned together. After we were safe I told him that my life was his.\nAnd I meant it, then. Until Magali came between us I would have died\nfor him with a right good will. After that I was ready enough that he\nshould do the dying--and so be gone out of my way.\n\nWhen he got Magali's promise, I say, my ugly feeling against him began.\nBut it was not very strong at first, and I was not clear about it in my\nown mind. All that I felt was that, somehow, he had got between me and\nthe sun. For one thing, I did not want to be clear about it. Down in\nthe roots of me I knew that I had no right to that sunshine, and that\nJan had--and I could not help thinking about how he had come overboard\nafter me and had held me up there in the tumbling sea, and how I had\ntold him that my life was his. But with this went a little thin\nthought, stirring now and then in the bottom of my mind though I would\nnot own to it, that in giving him my life--which still was his if he\nwanted it--I had not given him the right to spoil my life for me while\nleaving me still alive. And I did my best not to think one way or the\nother, and was glad that it all was a blur and a haze.\n\nAnd all the while I was living close beside Magali in that little\nhouse, with the sound of her steps always near me and the sound of her\nvoice always in my ears. She had a very sweet voice, with a freshness\nand a brightness in it that seemed to me like the brightness of her\neyes--and Magali's great black eyes were the brightest eyes that ever I\nsaw. Even in Arles, where all the women are beautiful, there would be\na buzz among the people lining Les Lices when Magali walked there of\na feast-day, wearing the beautiful dress that our women wear here in\nProvence. To look at her made you think of an Easter morning sun.\n\n\nIII\n\n\"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!\"\n\nMy mother's words kept on ringing in my ears after I had left her.\nSuddenly the haze was gone and I saw clearly--and I knew that my\nheart's deep desire was to have Magali for my very own. And with that\nsudden coming of clear sight I knew, too, that I could have her. Out\nof the past came a crowd of memories which proved it to me. In my dull\nway, I say, I had fancied that I loved Magali as a sister, and I had\ntried to keep that fancy always by me in my haze. But with the haze\ngone--swept away by my mother's words as the mistral sweeps away our\nMediterranean fogs--I knew that Magali never had been the fool that I\nhad been.\n\nI remembered her looks and her ways with me from the very day when she\ncame to us, when she was just turned of sixteen: how she used sometimes\nto lay her hand lightly on my shoulder, how she would bend over to look\nat the net that I was mending until her hair brushed against my cheek\nor my forehead, how she always was bringing things to show me that I\ncould not see rightly unless she stood very close at my side, and most\nof all how a dozen times a day she would be flashing at me her great\nblack eyes. And I remembered how moody and how strange in her ways she\nwas just before Jan got his promise from her; and how, when she told\nme that her promise was given, she gave me a look like none that ever\nI had from her, and said slowly: \"The fisherman who will not catch any\nfish at all because he cannot catch the fish he wants most--is a fool,\nMarius!\"\n\nYet even then I did not understand; though, as I say, my eyes were\nopened a little and I had the feeling that Jan had got between me\nand the sun. That feeling grew stronger because of the way that she\ntreated him and treated me. Jan was for hurrying the marriage, but she\nkept him dangling and always was putting him off. As for me, I got all\nsides of her moods and tempers. Sometimes she scarcely would speak to\nme. Sometimes she would give me looks from those big black eyes of\nhers that thrilled me through! Sometimes she would hang about me in a\npatient sad way that made me think of a dog begging for food. And the\ncolour so went out of her face that her big black eyes looked bigger\nand blacker still.\n\nThen it was that I began to find in the haze that was about me a\nrefuge--because I did not want to see clear. I let my thoughts go out\nto Magali, and stopped them before they got to Jan. It would be time\nenough, I reasoned--though I did not really reason it: I only felt\nit--to think about him when I had to. For the passing hours it was\nenough to have the sweetness of being near Magali--and that grew to\nbe a greater sweetness with every fresh new day. Presently I noticed\nthat her colour had come back again; and it seemed to me--though that\nmay have been only because of my new love of her--that she had a new\nbeauty, tender and strange. Certainly there was a new brightness, a\ncuriously glowing brightness, in her eyes.\n\nFor Jan, things went hardly in those days. Having her promise, he had\nrights in her--as we say in Provence. But he did not get many of his\nrights. Half the time when he claimed her for walks on the hill-sides\namong the olive-orchards, she would not go with him--because she had\nher work to do at home, she said. And there was I, where her work was,\nat home! For a while Jan did not see beyond the end of his nose about\nit. I do not think that ever it crossed his mind to think of me in the\nmatter--not, that is, until some one with better eyes than his eyes\nhelped him to see. For he knew that I was his friend, and I suppose\nthat he remembered what I had told him about my life being his. And\neven when his eyes were helped, he would not at first fully believe\nwhat he must plainly have seen. But he soon believed enough to make him\nchange his manner toward me, and to make him watch sharp for something\nthat would give him the right to speak words to me which would bring\nmatters to a fair settlement by blows. And I was ready, as I have\nsaid--though I would not fairly own it to myself--to come to blows with\nhim. For I wanted him dead, and out of my way.\n\nAnd so my mother's words, which had made me at last see clearly, stayed\nby me as I went sailing in my boat softly seaward down the \u00e9tang. And\nthey struck deeper into me because Jan's boat was just ahead of mine;\nand the sight of him, and the thought of how he had saved my life only\nto cross it, made me long to run him down and drown him, and so be quit\nof him for good and all. I made up my mind then that, whether I killed\nhim or left him living, it would be I who should have Magali and not he.\n\n\nIV\n\n\"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!\"\n\nMy mother said that again to me when I came home that night from my\nfishing; and she said it to me often as the days went on. She saw the\nchange that had come to me, and she knew what was in my soul. It is\nnot wonderful, when you stop to think about it, that a man's mother\nshould know what is in his soul: for the body in which that soul is,\nthe living home of it, is a part of her own. And she grew sad and\nweary-looking when she found that her words had no hold on me, and\nthere came into her eyes the sorrowful look that comes into the eyes of\nold people who are soon to die.\n\nBut Magali's eyes were the only eyes that I cared for then, and they\nseemed to me to grow brighter and brighter every day. When she and I\nwalked in the olive-orchards together in the starlight the glow of them\noutshone the star-glow. It seemed to light up my heart.\n\nI do not think that we talked much in those walks. I do not seem to\nremember our talking. But we understood each other, and we were agreed\nabout what we were to do. I was old enough to marry as I pleased, but\nMagali was not--she could not marry without my mother's word. We meant\nto force that word. Some day we would go off in my boat together--over\nto Les Saintes Maries, perhaps; or perhaps to Marseille. It did not\nmatter where we went. When we came back again, at the end of two or\nthree days, my mother no longer could deny us--she would have to give\nin. And no one would think the worse of Magali: for that is our common\nway of settling a tangled love-matter here in Provence.\n\nBut I did not take account of Jan in my plans, and that was where I\nmade a mistake. Jan had just as strong a will as I had, and every\nbit of his will was set upon keeping Magali for himself. I wanted\nher to break with him entirely, but that she would not do. She was a\ntrue Proven\u00e7ale--and I never yet knew one of our women who would rest\nsatisfied with one lover when she could have two. If she can get more\nthan two, that is better still. While I hung back from her, Magali was\nmore than ready to come to me; but when she found me eager after her,\nand knew that she had a grip on me, she danced away.\n\nAnd so, before long, Jan again had his walks with her in the\nolive-orchards by starlight just as I did, and likely enough her eyes\nglowed for him just as they did for me. When they were off that way\ntogether I would get into a wild-beast rage over it. Sometimes I would\nfollow them, fingering my knife. I suppose that he felt like that when\nthe turn was mine. Anyhow, the love-making chances which she gave\nhim--even though in my heart I still was sure of her--kept me always\nwatching him; and I could see that he always was watching me. Very\nlikely he felt sure of her too, and that was his reason--just as it was\nmy reason--for not bringing our matter to a fighting end. I was ready\nenough to kill him, God knows. Unless his eyes lied when he looked at\nme, he was ready to kill me.\n\nAnd in that way the summer slipped past and the autumn came, and\nneither of us gained anything. I was getting into a black rage over\nit all. Down inside of me was a feeling like fire in my stomach that\nmade me not want to eat, and that made what I did eat go wrong. My poor\nmother had given up trying to talk to me. She saw that she could not\nchange my way--and, too, I suppose that she pretty well understood it\nall: for she had lived her life, and she knew the ways of our men and\nof our women when love stings them here in Provence. Only, her sadness\ngrew upon her with her hopelessness. What I remember most clearly as\nI think of her in those last days is her pale old face and the dying\nlook in her sorrowful eyes.\n\nBut seeing her in that way grief-struck only made my black rage\nblacker and the fire in my stomach burn hotter. I had the feeling that\nthere was a devil down there who all the time was getting bigger and\nstronger: and that before long he and I would take matters in hand\ntogether and settle them for good and all. As for keeping on with\nthings as they were, it was not to be thought of. Better than much more\nof such a hell-life would be ending everything by killing Jan.\n\nWhat made me hang back from that was the certainty that if I did kill\nhim--even in a fair fight, with his chance as good as mine--I would\nlose Magali beyond all hope: for the gendarmes would have me away in a\nwhiff to jail--and then off would go my head, or, what would be just\nas bad, off I would go head and all to Cayenne. It was no comfort to\nme to know that Magali would almost cry her eyes out over losing me.\nOf course she would do that, being a Proven\u00e7ale. But before her eyes\nwere quite out she would stop crying; and then in a moment she would\nbe laughing again; and in another moment she would be freshly in love\nonce more--with some man who was not murdered and who was not gone for\nhis lifetime over seas. And all that, also, would be because she was a\nProven\u00e7ale.\n\n\nV\n\nAll the devils are let loose on earth on All Souls Eve--that is a fact\nknown to everybody here in Provence. But whether it was one of those\nloosed devils, or the devil that had grown big in my own inside, that\nmade me do what I did I do not know. What I do know, certainly, is that\nabout dusk on All Saints Day the thought of how I could force things to\nbe as I wanted them to be came into my heart.\n\nMy thought was not a new thought, exactly. It was only that I would do\nwhat we had planned to do to make my mother give in to us: get Magali\ninto my boat and carry her off with me for a day or two to Les Saintes.\nBut it came to me with the new meaning that in that way I could make\nMagali give in to me too. When we came back she would be ready enough\nto marry me, and my mother would be for hurrying our marrying along.\nIt all was as plain and as sure as anything could be. And, as I have\nsaid, nobody would think the worse of Magali afterward; because that\nway of cutting through such difficulties is a common way with us in\nProvence.\n\nAnd All Souls Eve was the time of all times for doing it. The whole\ntown is in commotion then. In the churches, when the Vespers of All\nSaints are finished, the Vespers of the Dead are said. Then, just\nafter sunset, the streets are crowded with our people hurrying to\nthe graveyard with their lanterns for the graves. Nothing is thought\nabout but the death-fires. From all the church towers--in Jonqui\u00e8res,\nin the Isle, in Ferri\u00e8res--comes the sad dull tolling of bells. After\nthat, for an hour or more, the town is almost deserted. Only the very\nold, and the very young, and the sick with their watchers, and the\nbell-ringers in the towers, are left there. Everybody else is in the\ngraveyard, high up on the hill-side: first busied in setting the lights\nand in weeping over dead loved ones; and then, when the duty to the\ndead ones is done with, in walking about through the graveyard to see\nthe show. In Provence we take a great interest in every sort of show.\n\nMagali and I had no death-fires to kindle, for in the graveyard were\nno dead of ours. Our people were of Les Saintes Maries, and there\ntheir graves were--and my father, who was drowned at his fishing, had\nno grave at all. But we went always to the graveyard on All Souls\nEve, and most times together, that we might see the show with the\nothers and enjoy the bustle of the crowd. And so there was nothing out\nof the common when I asked her to come with me; and off we started\ntogether--leaving my old mother weeping at home for my dead father, who\ncould have no death-fire lit for him because his bones were lying lost\nto us far away in the depths of the sea.\n\nOur house was in the eastern quarter of the town, in Jonqui\u00e8res. To\nreach the graveyard we had to cross the Isle, and go through Ferri\u00e8res,\nand then up the hill-side beyond. But I did not mean that we should do\nthat; and when we had crossed the Canal du Roi I said to Magali that we\nwould turn, before we went onward, and walk down past the Fish-market\nto the end of the Isle--that from there we might see the lights glowing\nin the dusk on the slope rising above us black against the western sky.\nWe had done that before--it is a pretty sight to see all those far-off\nglittering points of light above, and then to see their glittering\nreflections near by in the water below--and she willingly came with me.\n\nBut I had more in view. Down at the end of the Isle, along with the\nother boats moored at the wharf there to be near the Fish-market, my\nboat was lying; and when we were come close to her I said suddenly, as\nthough the thought had entered my head that minute, that we would go\naboard of her and run out a little way--and so see the death-fires more\nclearly because they would be less hidden by the shoulder of the hill.\nI did not have to speak twice. Magali was aboard of the boat on the\ninstant, and was clapping her hands at the notion--for she had, as all\nour women have, a great pleasure in following any sudden fancy which\npromises something amusing and also a little strange. And I was quick\nafter her, and had the lines cast off and began to get up the sail.\n\n\"Oh,\" she said, \"won't the oars do? Need we bother with the sail for\nsuch a little way?\"\n\nBut I did not answer her, and went on with what I was doing, while\nthe boat drifted quickly out from land before the gusts of wind which\nstruck us harder and harder as we cleared the point of the Isle. Until\nthen I had not thought about the weather--my mind had been full of the\nother and bigger thought. The gusts of wind waked me up a little, and\nas I looked at the sky I began to have doubts that I could do what I\nwanted to do; for it was plain that a gale was rising which would make\nticklish work for me even out on the Gulf of Fos--and would make pretty\nnear impossible my keeping on to Les Saintes over the open sea. And I\nhad about made up my mind that we must go back, and that I must carry\nout my plan some other time, when there came a hail to us from the\nshore.\n\n\"Where are you going?\" called a voice--and as we turned our looks\nshoreward there was Jan. He had been following us, I suppose--just as I\nsometimes had followed him.\n\nBefore I could answer him, Magali spoke. \"We are going out on the water\nto see the death-fires, Jan,\" she said. \"We are going only a very\nlittle way.\"\n\nHer words angered me. There was something in them that seemed to show\nthat he had the right to question her. That settled me in my purpose.\nStorm or no storm, on I would go. And I brought the boat up to the\nwind, so as to lay our course straight down the \u00c9tang de Caronte, and\ncalled out to him: \"We are going where you cannot follow. Good-bye!\"\n\nAnd then a gust of wind heeled us over, and we went on suddenly with\na dash--as a horse goes when you spur him--and the water boiled and\nhissed under our bows. In another half-minute we were clear of the\nshelter of the point, and then the wind came down on us off the hills\nin a rush so strong that I had to ease off the sheet sharply--and I had\na queer feeling about what was ahead of me out on the Gulf of Fos.\n\n\"Marius! Marius! What are you doing?\" Magali cried in a shiver of\nfright: for she knew by that time that something was back of it all in\nmy mind. As she spoke I could see through the dusk that Jan was running\nup the sail of his boat, and in a minute more would be after us.\n\n\"I am doing what I ought to have done long ago,\" I said. \"I am taking\nyou for my own. There is nothing to fear, dear Magali. You shall not\nbe in danger. I had meant to take you to Les Saintes. But a gale is\nrising and we cannot get to Les Saintes to-night. We will run across\nthe Gulf of Fos and anchor in the Grau de Gloria. There is a shepherd's\nhut near the Grau. I will make a fire in it and you can sleep there\ncomfortably, while I watch outside. After all, it makes no difference\nwhere we go. I shall have carried you off--when we go back you must be\nmy wife.\"\n\nShe did not understand at first. She was too much frightened with the\nsuddenness of it all, and with the coming of Jan, and with the boat\nflying on through the rushing of the wind. I looked back and saw that\nJan had got away after us. Dimly I could make out his sail through the\ndusk that lay thick upon the water. Beyond it and above it was a broad\npatch of brightness where all the death-fires were burning together in\nthe graveyard. We had come too far to see any longer those many points\nof light singly. In a mass, they made against the black hill-side a\ngreat bright glow.\n\n\nVI\n\n\"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!\"\n\nMy mother's words seemed to sound in my ears loudly, coming with the\nrush of wind that eddied around me out of the sail's belly. They gave\nme a queer start, as the thought came with them that here at last my\nheart's deep desire would be mine presently--if only I could snatch it\nand keep it from the she-wolf of the sea.\n\nMagali was silent--half standing, half sitting, against the weather\nside of the boat, close in front of me as I stood at the tiller with\nthe sheet in my hand. She had got over her fright. I could tell that by\nthe brightness of her eyes, and by the warm colour in her cheeks that\nI had a glimpse of as we flashed past the break in the hills where the\nMas Labillon stands. And in that moment while the dusk was thinned a\nlittle I could see, too, that she was breathing hard. I know what our\nwomen are, and I know what she was feeling. Our women like to be fought\nfor, and any one of them gladly would have been in Magali's place--with\nthe two strongest and handsomest men in Les Martigues in a fair way to\ncome to a death-grip for her in the whirl of a rising storm.\n\nBack in the dusk, against the faint glow of the death-fires, I could\nsee the sail of Jan's boat dipping and swaying with the thrusts of the\nwind-gusts as it came on after me. It had gained a little; and I knew\nthat it would gain more, for Jan's boat was a speedier boat than mine\non the wind. Close-hauled, I could walk away from him; but in running\ndown the \u00c9tang de Caronte I had no choice in my sailing. Out on the\nGulf of Fos, if I dared take that chance, and if he dared follow me,\nI could bear up to windward and so shake him off--making for the Anse\nd'Auguette and taking shelter there. But even my hot blood chilled a\nlittle at the thought of going out that night on the Gulf of Fos. When\nwe were down near the end of the \u00e9tang--close to the Salines, where it\nis widest--the wind that pelted down on us from the hills was terribly\nstrong. It was hard to stand against even there, where the water was\nsmooth. Outside, it would be still stronger, and the water would be all\nin a boil. And at the end, to get into the Anse d'Auguette, we should\nhave to take the risk of a roaring sea abeam.\n\nBut any risk was better than the risk of what might happen if Jan\noverhauled me. Now that I fairly had Magali away from him, I did not\nwant to fight him. What might come in a fight in rough water--where the\nwinds and the waves would have to be reckoned with, and with the most\ncareful reckoning might play tricks on me--was too uncertain; while\nif I could stand him off and get away from him, so that even for one\nnight I could keep Magali with me, the game would be won. After that,\nif he wanted it, I would fight him as much as he pleased.\n\nThe thought that I would win--in spite of Jan and in spite of the\nstorm, too--made all my blood tingle. More by habit than anything else\nI sailed the boat: for my eyes were fixed on Magali's eyes, shining\nthere close to me, and my heart was full of her. We did not speak, but\nonce she turned and looked at me--bending forward a little, so that her\nface was within a foot of mine. What she saw in my eyes was so easy to\nread that she gave all at once a half-laugh and a half-sob--and then\nturned away and peered through the blustering darkness toward Jan's\nsail. Somehow, the way she did that made me feel that she was holding\nthe balance between us; that she was waiting--as the she among wild\nbeasts waits while the males are fighting for her--for the stronger of\nus to win. After that I was ready to face the Gulf of Fos.\n\nThe time for facing the gulf was close on me, too. We had run through\nthe canal of the Salines and were out in the open water of Bouc--the\ngreat harbour at the mouth of the \u00e9tang. The gale roared down on us,\nnow that there was little land to break it, and we began to hear the\nboom of the waves pounding on the rocks outside. I luffed well into the\nwind and bore up for the narrows opening seaward where the Fort de Bouc\nlight-house stands. The water still was not rough enough to trouble us.\nIt would not be rough until we were at the very mouth of the narrows.\nThen, all at once, would come the crush and fury of the wind and sea.\nI knew what it would be like: and again a chill shot through me at\nthe thought of risking everything on that one great chance. But I\nhad one thing to comfort me: the moon had risen--and while the light\ncame brokenly, as the clouds thinned and thickened again, there was\nbrightness enough even at the darkest for me to lay a course when I\ngot out among the tumbling waves. Yet only a man half mad with passion\nwould have thought of fronting such a danger; and even I might have\nheld back at the last moment had I not been stung to go on.\n\nJan had so gained on me in the run down the \u00e9tang that as we came out\nfrom the canal of the Salines his boat was within less than a dozen\nrods of mine; and as I hauled my sheet and bore up for the narrows he\nshot down upon us and for a moment was almost under our stern. And at\nthat Magali gave a little jump and a half-gasp, and laid her hand upon\nmine, crying: \"Marius! Quick! Sail faster! He will take me from you!\nGet me away! Get me away!\"\n\nAnd then I knew that she no longer balanced us, but that her heart was\nfor me. After that I would have faced not only the Gulf of Fos but the\nopen Mediterranean in the worst storm that ever blew.\n\n\nVII\n\n\"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!\"\n\nThe words were in my ears again as we went flying on toward the\nnarrows--with the reflection of the flame in the light-house making\na broad bright path for us, and the flame itself rising high before\nus against the cloud-rack like a ball of fire. But God was not with\nme then, and I gave those warning words no heed. I was drunk with the\ngladness that came to me when Magali made her choice between us; and\nall that I thought was that even if we did go down together, out there\nin the Gulf of Fos, I still would be keeping her from Jan and holding\nher for my own. That there might be any other ending for us never\ncrossed my mind.\n\nJan did not think, I suppose, that I would dare to go outside the\nharbour. He was in a rage too, no doubt; but, still, he must have been\na good deal cooler than I was--for a rage of hate does not boil in the\nvery bones of a man, as a rage of love does--and so cool enough to know\nthat it was sheer craziness to take a boat out into that sea. What I\nmeant to do must have come to him with suddenness--as we drew so close\nto the light-house that the flame no longer was reflected ahead of us,\nand the narrows were open over my starboard bow, and I let the boat\nfall off from the wind and headed her into the broken water made by\nthe inroll of half-spent waves. In my run close-hauled I had dropped\nhim, but not so much as I thought I should, and as I came on the wind\nagain--and hung for a moment before gathering fresh headway--he ranged\nup once more within hail.\n\n\"Where are you going? Are you crazy?\" he called out--and though he must\nhave shouted with all the strength of his big lungs his voice came thin\nthrough the wind to us, and broken by the pounding of the sea.\n\n\"Where you won't dare to follow!\" I called back to him--and we went\nrushing on below the big old fort, that carries the light on its tower,\nthrough the short passage between the harbour and the Gulf of Fos.\n\nSomething he answered, but what it was I do not know: for as we cleared\nthe shelter of the fort--but while the tail of rock beyond it still was\nto windward, so that I could not luff--down with a crash on us came\nthe gale. I could only let fly the sheet--but even with the sheet all\nout over we went until the sail was deep in the water, and over the\nleeward gunwale the waves came hissing in. I thought that there was the\nend of it; but the boat had such way on her that even on her beam ends\nand with the sail dragging she went on until we had cleared the rocks;\nand then I luffed her and she rose slowly, and for the moment was safe\nagain with her nose in the wind.\n\nMagali's face was dead white--like a dead woman's face, only for her\nshining eyes. She fell to leeward as the boat went over--I could not\nspare a hand to save her--and struck hard against the gunwale. When the\nboat righted and she got up again her forehead was bleeding. On her\nwhite face the blood was like a black stain. But she put her hand on\nmine and said: \"I am not frightened, Marius. I love you!\"\n\nJan was close aboard again. As our way had deadened he had overhauled\nus; and because he saw what had happened to my boat he was able to\nbring his boat through the narrows without going over.\n\n\"Marius! Marius! For God's sake, for Magali's sake, put about!\" he\nshouted. \"It is the only chance to save her. Put about, I say!\"\n\nHe was only a little way to leeward of us, but I barely made out his\nwords. The wind was roaring past us, and the waves were banging like\ncannon on the rocks close by.\n\nWhat he said was the truth, and I knew it. I knew that the gale was\nonly just beginning, and that no boat could live through it for\nanother hour. And then one of the devils loose on that All Souls Eve,\nor perhaps it was my own devil inside of me, put a new evil thought\ninto my heart: making clear to me how I might get rid of Jan for good\nand all, and without its ending in my losing my head or in my losing\nMagali by being sent overseas. It was a chance, to be sure, and full of\ndanger. But just then I was ready for any danger or for any chance.\n\n[Illustration: \"THE OTHERS WERE UPCAST ON THE ROCKS\"]\n\n\"Lie down in the bottom of the boat, Magali,\" I called sharply. \"That\nis the safest place for you. We are going about.\"\n\nI spoke the truth to Magali; but, also, I did not want her to see what\nhappened. She did what I told her to do, and then I began to wear the\nboat around. How I did it without swamping, I do not know. Perhaps the\ndevils of All Souls Eve held up my mast through the black moments while\nwe lay wallowing in the trough of the sea. But I did do it; and when I\nwas come about I headed straight for Jan's boat--lying dead to leeward\nof me, not twenty yards away. The clouds thinned suddenly and almost\nthe full light of the moon was with us. We could see each other's faces\nplainly--and in mine he saw what I meant to do.\n\n\"It will be all of us together, Marius!\" he called to me. \"Do you want\nto murder Magali too?\"\n\nBut I did not believe that it would be all of us together: for I knew\nthat his boat was an old one, and that mine was new and strong. And,\nalso, the devils had me in their hold. The gale was behind me, driving\nme down upon him like a thunder-bolt. As I shot close to him the moon\nshone out full for a moment through a rift in the clouds. In that\nmoment I saw his face clearly. The moonlight gleamed on it. It was a\nghastly dead white. But I do not suppose that it was for himself that\nhe was afraid. Jan was not a coward, or he would not have jumped after\nme when I was drowning in the stormy sea.\n\nOnce more he called to me. \"Marius! For the sake of Magali--\"\n\nAnd then there was a crashing and a rending of planks as I shot against\nhis boat, and a sudden upspringing of my own boat under me. And after\nthat, for a long while, a roaring of water about me, and my own body\ntumbled and thrust hither and thither in it, and at last a blow which\nseemed to dash me down into a vast black depth that was all buzzing\nwith little blazing stars.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut the others were upcast on the rocks dead.\n\n\n\n\nA Sea Upcast\n\n\nI\n\nWhen we East Anglians be set to do a thing, we be set firm. We come at\nwhat we want by slow thinking, but when we know what we want we hold\nfast by it--being born stubborn, and also being born staunch. It is\nthe same with our hating and with our loving: we fire slowly, but when\nat last the fire is kindled it burns so strongly in the very hearts of\nus--with a white glow, hotter than any flame--that there is no putting\nit out again short of putting out our lives.\n\nMen and women alike, we are born that way; and we fishermen of the\nSuffolk and Norfolk coast likewise are bred that way: seeing that\nfrom the time we go afloat as youngsters until the time that we are\ndrowned, or are grown so old and rusty that there is no more strength\nfor sea-fighting left in us, our lives for the most part are spent in\nfighting the North Sea. That is a fight that needs stubbornness to\ncarry it through to a finish. Also, it needs knowledge of the ocean's\ntricks and turns--because the North Sea can do what we East Anglians\ncan't do: it can smile at you and lie. A man must have a deal of\ntraining before he can tell by the feel of it in his own insides that\nclose over beyond a still sea and a sun-bright sky a storm is cooking\nup that will kill him if it can. And even when he feels the coming of\nit--if he be well to seaward, or if he be tempted by the fish being\nplenty and by the bareness of his own pockets to hold on in the face of\nit--he must have more in his head than any coast pilot has if he is to\nwin home to Yarmouth Harbour or to Lowestoft Roads.\n\nFor God in his cruelty has set more traps to kill seafarers off this\neasterly outjut of England, I do believe, than He has set anywhere else\nin all the world: there being from Covehithe Ness northward to the\nWinterton Overfalls nothing but a maze of deadly shoals--all cut up by\nchannels in which there is no sea-room--that fairly makes you queazy to\nthink about when you are coming shoreward in a northeast gale. And as\nif that were not enough to make sure of man-food for the fishes, the\ncurrents that swirl and play among these shoals are up to some fresh\nwickedness with every hour of the tide-run and with every half shift of\nwind. Whether you make in for Yarmouth by Hemesby Hole to the north, or\nby the Hewett Channel to the south, or split the difference by running\nthrough Caister Road, it is all one: twisting about the Overfalls and\nthe Middle Cross Sand and the South Scroby, there the currents are.\nWhat they will be doing with you, or how they will be doing it, you\ncan't even make a good guess at; all that you can know for certain\nbeing that they will be doing their worst by you at the half tide.\n\nAt least, though, the Lowestoft men and the Yarmouth men have a good\nharbour when once they fetch it; and by that much are better off than\nwe Southwold men, who have no harbour at all. With anything of a sea\nrunning there is no making a landing under Southwold Cliff--though it\nis safe enough when once your boat is beached and hauled up there; and\nso, if the storm gets ahead of us, there is nothing left but to run for\nLowestoft: and a nice time we often have of it, with an on-shore gale\nblowing, working up into the Covehithe Channel under the tail of the\nBarnard Bank! As for beating up to seaward of the Barnard and running\nin through Pakefield Gat, anybody can try for it who has a mind to--and\nwho has a boat that can eat the very heart out of the wind. Sometimes\nyou do fetch it. But what happens to you most times is best known to\nthe Newcome Shoal. When you have cleared the Barnard--if so be you do\nclear it--the Newcome lies close under your lee for all the rest of\nthe run. What it has done for us fishermen you can see when the spring\ntides bare it and show black scraps of old boats wrecked there, and\nsometimes a gleam of sand-whitened bones.\n\nFor a good many years we had another chance, though a poor one, and\nthat was to make a longish leg off shore and then run in before the\nwind and cross the Barnard into Covehithe Channel through what we\ncalled the Wreck Gat--a cut in the bank that the currents made striking\nagainst a wrecked ship buried there. The Wreck Gat is gone now--closed\nby the same storm that nearly closed my life for me--and you will not\nfind it marked nowadays on the charts. Its going was a good riddance.\nAt the best it was a desperate bad place to get through; and at its\nworst it was about the same as a sea pitfall: and that nobody knows\nbetter than I do, seeing that I was the last man to get through it\nalive. But when you happened to be to windward of it, if it served at\nall, it served better than running down a half mile farther and trying\nto round the tail of the bank.\n\nVery many craft beside our own fisher-boats find their death-harbour\non our East Anglian sands. Our coast, as it has a right to be, is the\ndread of every sailor man who sails the narrow seas. Great ships,\nstorm-swept on our sands, are sucked down into the depths of them,\nor are hammered to pieces on the top of them, as light-heartedly as\nthough they were no more than cock-boats. And the supply of ships to be\nwrecked there is unending--since the half of the trade of the world,\nthey say, sails past our shores. From every land they come: and many\nand many a one of them comes but never goes. Down on them bangs the\nnortheast wind with a roar and a rattle--and presently our sands have\nhold of them with a grip that is to keep them fast there till the last\nday! Sometimes the dead men who were living sailors aboard those ships\ncome ashore to us, though they are more like to find graves in the\nsands that murdered them or to be swept out to sea; sometimes, by a\ntwist of chance that you may call a miracle, the sea has a fancy for\ncasting one or two of them ashore alive. Dazed and half mad creatures\nthose live ones are, usually: their wits all jangled and shaken by the\ngreat horror that has been upon them while they tossed among the waves.\n\nAnd so, as you may see, we men of the Suffolk and Norfolk coast need\nthe stiff backbone that we have as our birthright for the sea-fighting\nthat is our life-work; and it is not to be wondered at that our life of\nsea-fighting makes us still more set and stubborn in our ways.\n\n\nII\n\nMy little Tess came to me, a sea upcast, after one of our great\nnortheast gales. I myself found her: lying where the waves had landed\nher on the shingle, and where they had left her with the fall of the\ntide.\n\nI was but a bit of a lad myself, then, going on to be eight years\nold. Storms had no fright in them for me in those days. What I most\nwas thinking about when one was blowing--while my poor mother, if my\nfather was out in his boat, would be looking wild-eyed seaward, or in\nthe bed-room praying for him on her knees--was what I'd be picking up\non the shingle when the gale was over and the sea gone down. Later on,\nwhen I came to know that at the gale's end I might be lying myself on\nthe shingle, along with the other wreckage, I got to looking at storms\nin a different way.\n\nThat blow that brought my Tess to me had no fears in it for my poor\nmother, seeing that it came in the night time and my father safe at\nhome. The noise of my father getting up wakened me; and in a sleepy\nway I watched him from my little bed, when he had the lamp lighted,\nhurrying his clothes on that he might go down to where his boat was\nhauled up on the shingle and heave her with the capstan still higher\nabove the on-run of the waves. And as I lay there, very drowsy,\nwatching my father drag his big boots on and hearing the roar of the\nwind and feeling the shaking that it was giving to our house-walls,\nthere came suddenly the sharp loud bang of a gun.\n\nMy father stopped as he heard it--with one leg in the air and his hands\ngripping the boot-straps, I can see him now. \"That's from close by!\"\nhe said. \"God help them--they must be ashore on the Barnard Bank!\" Then\nhe jammed his other boot on, jumped into his sou'wester, and was gone\non a run. My mother ran to the door--I know now, having myself helped\nto get men ashore from wrecked ships at my life's peril, what her fear\nwas--and called after him into the darkness: \"Don't thou go to putting\nthy life in danger, George May!\" What she said did no good. The wind\nswallowed her words before they got to him. For a minute or two she\nstood in the doorway, all blown about; then, putting her weight on it,\nshe got the door shut and came back into the bed-room and knelt by the\nbedside praying for him. I still was very drowsy. Presently I went off\nto sleep again, thinking--God forgive me for it!--that if a ship had\nstranded on the Barnard I'd find some pretty pickings when morning came\nand the storm was over and I could get down to the shore.\n\nAnd that was my first thought when I wakened, and found the sun shining\nand the wind blowing no more than a gentle breeze. My father was home\nagain, and safe and sound. There had been no chance for a rescue,\nhe said--the ship being deep down in the sands, and all her people\nswept out of her, by the time that daylight came. And so I bolted my\nbreakfast, and the very minute that I had it inside of me I was off\ndown the cliff-path and along the beach northward to find what I could\nfind. All the other Southwold boys were hurrying that way too; but our\nhouse being up at the north end of the village gave me the start of all\nof them but John Heath, who lived close by us, and he came down the\ncliff-path at my heels.\n\nThe Barnard Bank lies off shore from Covehithe Ness, and under the Ness\nour pickings would be most like to be. At the best they would be but\nlittle things--buckets and baskets and brooms and odd oars, and such\nlike--the coast guard men seeing to it that we got no more; but things,\nall the same, that any boy would jump for: and so away John and I ran\ntogether, and we kept together until we were under the Ness--and could\nsee the broken stern-post of the wreck, all that was left to see of\nher, sticking up from the Barnard going bare with the falling tide.\nThere I passed him--he giving a shout and stopping to pick up a basket\nthat I missed seeing because on my side weed covered it--and so was\nleading him as we rounded the Ness by a dozen yards. And then it was I\nwho gave a shout--and made a dash for a big white bundle that was lying\nin a nook of the shingle just above the lap of the waves.\n\nJohn saw the bundle almost as soon as I did, and raced me for it. But\nI did see it first, and I touched it first, and so it fairly was mine.\nA white sheet was the outside of it; and at one corner, under the\nsheet, a bit of a blanket showed. I would have none of John's help as I\nunwrapped it. He stood beside me, though, and said as I opened it that\neven if I had touched it first we had seen it together--which wasn't\nso--and that we must go share and share. I did not answer him, being\nfull of wonder what I was like to come to when I had the bundle undone.\nIn a good deal of a hurry I got the sheet loose, it was knotted at the\ncorners, and then the blanket, and then still another blanket that was\nunder the first one: and when that inner wrapping was opened there was\nlying--a little live baby! It looked up into my face with its big black\neyes, and it blinked them for a minute--having been all shut up in the\ndark and the sunlight bothering it--and then it smiled at me as if I'd\njust waked it up not from the very edge of death in the sea but from a\ncomfortable nap in its cradle on land!\n\nJohn Heath burst out laughing. \"You can have my share of it, George,\"\nsaid he; \"we've got babies enough of our own at home.\" And with that he\nran away and began to look again for brooms and buckets along the shore.\n\nBut I loved my little Tess from that first sight of her, and I was\nglad that John had said that I might have his share in her; though of\ncourse, because I first saw her and first touched her, he had no real\nshare in her at all. So I wrapped her up again as well as I could in\nher blankets--leaving the wet sheet lying there--and set off for home\nalong the shore, carrying her in my arms. Tired enough I got before I\nhad lugged my load that long way, and up the cliff, and so to our house\ndoor. In the doorway my mother was standing, and I put the bundle in\nher arms. \"Lord save us!\" said my mother. \"What's the boy got here?\"\n\n\"Mother,\" said I, \"it's a little beautiful live baby--and I found it,\nand it's mine!\"\n\n\nIII\n\nThat was the way that my Tess came to me: and I know now how good my\nfather and my mother were in letting me keep her for my own--they with\nonly what my father could make by his fishing to live on, and the wolf\nnever very far away from the door. But the look of those black eyes of\nhers and the smile in them won my mother's love to her, just as it had\nwon mine; and my mother told me, too, long years afterward, that her\nheart was hungry for the girl baby that God had not given her--and she\nsaid that Tess seemed to be her very own baby from the minute that she\ntook her close to her breast from my tired little arms.\n\nAs to where Tess came from--from what port in all the wide world the\nship sailed that brought her to us--we had no way of knowing. Nothing\nbut Tess in her bundle came ashore from the wreck; and what was left of\nthe ship burrowed down into the sands so fast and so far that there was\nto be seen of her only a broken bit of her stern-post at the storm's\nending. Even after the set of the currents against her sunken hull, on\nthe next spring tide, had cut through the Barnard Bank and so made the\nWreck Gat, no part of her but her broken stern-post ever showed. Tess\nherself, though, told us what her own name was, and so gave us a notion\nas to what land she belonged to; but we should have been none the\nwiser for her telling it--she talking in words that were the same as\nGreek to us--if the Vicar had not lent us a hand.\n\nMy finding the baby made a stir in the whole village, and everybody\nhad to have a look at her. In the afternoon along came the Vicar\ntoo--smiling through his gold spectacles, as he always did, and\nswinging his black cane. By that time, having had all the milk she\ncould hold, and a good nap, and more milk again, Tess was as bright as\na new sixpence: just as though she had not passed that morning nearer\nto death than ever she was like to pass again and live. She was lying\nsnug in my mother's arms before the fire, and in her own fashion was\ntalking away at a great rate--and my mother's heart quite breaking\nbecause her pretty chatter was all in heathen words that nobody could\nget at the meaning of. But the Vicar, being very learned, understood\nher in a minute. \"Why, it's Spanish,\" said he. \"It's Spanish as sure as\nyou're born! She's calling you 'madrecita,' Mrs. May--which is the same\nas 'motherkin,' you know. But I can't make even a guess at the rest of\nit. Everything ends in 'ita'--real baby-talk.\"\n\n\"Do kindly ask her, sir, what her blessed little name is,\" said my\nmother. \"It'll bring her a deal closer to us to know her name.\"\n\n\"I'll try her in Latin,\" said the Vicar--\"that's the best that I can\nmanage--and it'll be hit or miss if she understands.\" And then he bent\nover the little tot--she being then a bit over two years old, my mother\nthought--and asked her what her name was in Latin words.\n\nFor a minute there was a puzzled look in the big black eyes of her and\nher brow puckered. And then she smiled all over her pretty face and\nanswered, as clear as you please: \"Tesita.\" That a baby no bigger than\nthat understood Latin always has seemed to me most like a miracle of\nanything that ever I have known!\n\nMy mother looked bothered and chap-fallen. \"It's not a real name at\nall,\" she said, and sighed over it.\n\n\"It's a very good name indeed, Mrs. May,\" said the Vicar; \"only she's\ngiving you her baby way of saying it. Her name is Theresa. 'Tesita' is\nthe same as our 'Tess' would be, you know.\"\n\n\"Theresa! Tess!\" cried my mother, brightening up all in a minute. \"Why,\nthat was my own dear mother's name! Her having that name seems to make\nher in real truth mine, sir!\" And she hugged the baby close to the\nheart of her, and all in the same breath cried over it and laughed over\nit--thinking, I suppose, of her mother dead and buried, and thankful\nfor the daughter that she so longed for that had come to her upcast by\nthe sea.\n\nMore than what her name was, as is not to be wondered at, Tess never\ntold us; and the only thing in the world that gave us any knowledge\nof her--and that no more than that her people were like to be\ngentlefolk--was a gold chain about her neck, under her little night\ngown, with a locket fast to it on which were some letters in such a\njumble that even the Vicar could not make head nor tail of them, though\nhe tried hard.\n\n\nIV\n\nWhatever part of the world Tess came from, it was plain enough by the\nlook of her--and more and more plain as she grew up into a tall and\nlanky girl, and then into a tall slim woman--that Suffolk was a long\nway off from the land where she was born.\n\nOur Suffolk folk, for the most part, are shortish and thickset and fair\nand blue eyed. We men--being whipped about by the wind and weather,\nand the sea-salt tanned into us--lose our fairness early and go a\nbun-brown; but our women--having no salt spray in their faces, and only\ntheir just allowance of sunshine--have their blue eyes matched with the\nred and white cheeks that they were born with; and their hair, though\nsometimes it goes darkish, usually is a bright chestnut or a bright\nbrown. Also, our women are steady-going and sensible; though I must say\nthat now and then they are a bit hard to get along with: being given\nto doing their thinking slowly, and to being mighty fast set in their\nown notions when once they have made their minds up--the same as we\nmen. As for Tess--with her black eyes and her black hair, and her face\nall a cream white with not a touch of red in it--she was like none of\nthem; and she could think more out-of-the-way things and be more sorts\nof a girl in five minutes than any Suffolk lass that ever I came across\ncould think or be in a whole year!\n\nTess was unlike our girls in another matter: she had a mighty hot\nspit-fire temper of her own. Our girls, the same as our men, are\neasy-going and anger slowly; but when they do anger they are glowing\nhot to their very finger-tips, and a long while it takes them to cool\noff. But Tess would blaze up all in a minute--and as often as not with\nno real reason for it--and be for a while such an out-and-out little\nfury that she would send everything scudding before her; and then would\npull up suddenly in the thick of it, and seem to forget all about it,\nand like enough laugh at the people around her looking scared! Somehow,\nthough, it was seldom that she let me have a turn of her tantrums; and\nwhen she did they'd be over in no time, and she'd have her arms around\nme and be begging me to kiss her and to tell her that I didn't mind.\nI suppose that she was that way with me because for my part--having\nfrom the very first so loved her that quarreling with her was clean\nimpossible--I used just to stand and stare at her in her passions; and\nlike enough be showing by the look in my eyes the puzzled sorrow that I\nwas feeling in my inside. As to answering her anger with my anger, it\nnever once crossed my mind.\n\nWith John Heath things went differently. He would go ugly when she\nflew out at him--and would keep his anger by him after hers long was\nover and done with, and would show it by putting some hurt upon her\nin a dirty way. A good many thrashings I gave John Heath, at one\ntime or another, for that sort of thing; and the greatest piece of\nunreasonableness that Tess ever put on me, which is saying much for it,\nwas on that score: she being then ten years old, or thereabouts, and\nJohn and I well turned of sixteen.\n\nSome trick that he played on her--I don't know what it was--set her\nin a rage against him, and he made her worse by laughing at her, and\nshe ended by throwing sand in his eyes. Then his anger got up, and he\ncaught her--being twice the size of her--and boxed her ears. I came\nalong just then, and I can see the look of her now. She was not crying,\nas any ordinary child would have been--John having meant to hurt her,\nand hit hard. She was standing straight in front of him with her little\nhands gripped into fists as if she meant to fight him, that cream white\nface of hers gone a real dead white, a perfect blaze of passion in her\nbig black eyes. In another second or so she'd have been flying at him\nif I'd given her the chance. But I didn't--I sailed right in and myself\ngave him what he needed; and when I had finished with him I had so well\nblackened the two eyes of him that he forgot about the sand. But after\nit all was over, so far from being obliged to me, what did Tess do but\nfall to crying because I'd hurt him, and to saying that he'd only given\nher what she deserved! For a week and more she would not speak to me,\nand all that time she was trotting about sorrowfully at John's heels.\nIt seemed as though all of a sudden she had got to loving him because\nhe had played the man and the master to her; and I'm sure that his love\nfor her had its beginning then too.\n\nJohn's folks and my folks, as I have said, lived up at the north end\nof the village, a bit apart, and that made us three keep most together\nwhile we were little; but Tess never had much to do with the other\nchildren, even when she got big enough to be with them at school. They\ndid not get along with her, being puzzled by her whims and fancies and\nset against her by her spit-fire ways. And she did not get along with\nthem because she was quick about everything and all of them were slow.\nWhen she began to grow up, though, matters changed a good deal. The\nboys--she being like nobody else in the village--picked her out to make\nlove to, and that set the girls by the ears. Tess liked the love-making\na deal more than I liked her to like it; and she didn't mind what the\ngirls said to her because her wits were nimbler than their wits and\nshe always could give them better than they could send.\n\nSo things went while the years went till Tess was turned of seventeen,\nand was shot up into a tall slim woman in all ways so beautiful as to\nbe, I do believe, the most beautiful woman that God ever made. And then\nit was that Grace Gryce, damn her for it, found a whip that served to\nlash her; and so cruel a whip that she was near to lashing the life out\nof her with it at a single blow.\n\n\nV\n\nAccording to our Suffolk notions, Grace Gryce was a beauty: being\nstrongly set up and full built and well rounded, with cheeks as red as\nstrawberries, and blue eyes that for any good looking man had a smile\nin them, and over all a head of bright-brown hair. Had Tess been out\nof the way she'd have had things all as she wanted them, not another\ngirl in the village for looks coming near her; and so it was only human\nnature, I suppose, that she hated Tess for crossing her--making her\nalways go second, and a bad second, with the men.\n\nIt was about John Heath, though, that the heart of the matter was.\nAll the village knew that Grace fancied him, and that he half fancied\nher--and would have fancied her altogether had Tess been out of\nthe way. Making up his mind between them--John always was a thick\nthinker--did not seem to come easy to him. The whims and the ways\nof Tess--that made a dozen different sorts of girl of her in five\nminutes--seemed to set him off from her a-most as much as they set him\non: being a sort of puzzle, I'm free to say, that other men beside John\ncouldn't well understand. With Grace it was different. She might blow\nhot or she might blow cold with him; or she might show her temper--she\nhad a-plenty of it--and give him the rough side of her tongue: but what\nshe meant and what she wanted always was plain and clear. To be sure,\nthis is only my guess why he hung in the wind between them. Maybe he\nset too little store on Tess's love because it came to him too easily;\nmaybe he thought that by seeming to love her lightly he best could hold\nher fast.\n\nHold her fast he did, and that is certain. In spite of all her\nwhimsies, he had her love; and it was his, as I have said, from the\ntime when he man-mastered her by boxing the little ears of her--she\nbeing only ten years old. Always after that, even when she was at her\nsauciest and her airiest, he had only to speak short and sharp to her\nand she'd come to heel to him like a dog. Sometimes, seeing her taking\norders from him that way was close to setting me wild: I having my\nwhole heart fixed on her, and ready to give the very hands of me to\nhave from her the half of what she gave him. Not but what she loved me\ntoo, in her own fashion, and dearly. She showed that by the way that\nshe used to come to me in all her little hurts and troubles; and the\nsweetness and the comfortingness of her to me and to my mother always,\nbut most when my poor father was drowned, was beyond any words that I\nhave to put it in. But my pain was that the love which she had for me\nwas of the same sort that she had for my mother--and I was not wanting\nfrom her love of that kind. And so it cut to the quick of me--I who\nwould have kissed her shoe-soles--to see her so ready always to be meek\nand humble at a word from John. There were times, and a good many of\nthem--seeing her so dog-faithful to him, and he almost as careless of\nher as if she had been no more than a dog to him--that I saw red as I\nlooked at him, and got burning hot in the insides of me, and was as\nclose to murdering him as I well could be and he still go on alive.\n\nLike enough Grace Gryce--being of the same stock that I was, and made\nmuch as I was--had the same feeling for Tess that I had for John; and\nGrace, being a woman, had nothing to stop her from murdering Tess in a\nwoman's way. She would have done it sooner had her wits been quicker.\nTime and again they had had their word-fights together, and Tess always\ngetting the better of her because Grace's wits, like the rest of her,\nwere heavy and slow.\n\nIt was down by the boats, under the Gun Hill, that they fought the\nround out in which Grace drew blood at last. A lot of the girls were\ntogether there and Tess, for a wonder, happened to be with them. They\nall were saying to her what hard things they could think of; and she,\nin her quick way, was hitting back at them and scoring off them all.\nPoor sort of stuff it was that they were giving her: calling her \"Miss\nFine-Airs\" and \"Miss Maypole,\" and scorning the black eyes and the pale\nface of her, and girding at her the best they could because in no way\nwas she like themselves.\n\n\"It's a pity I'm so many kinds of ugliness!\" says Tess in her saucy\nway, and making it worse by laughing. \"It's a true pity that I'm not\npretty, like all the rest of you, and so am left lonely. If only I'd\nsome of your good looks, you see, I might have, as the rest of you\nhave, a lot of men at my heels.\"\n\nThat was a shot that hit all of them, but it hit Grace the hardest\nand she answered it. \"It's better,\" said she, \"to go your whole life\nwithout a man at your heels than it is to spend your whole life\ndog-tagging at the heels of a man.\"\n\nThe girls laughed at that, knowing well what Grace was driving at. But\nTess was ready with her answer and whipped back with it: \"Well, it's\nbetter to tag at a man's heels and he pleased with it than it is to\nwant to tag there and he not letting you--liking a may-pole, maybe,\nbetter than a butter-tub, and caring more, maybe, for grace by nature\nthan for Grace by name.\"\n\nThat turned the joke--only it was no joke--on Grace again; and as the\ngirls had not much more liking for her than they had for Tess, seeing\nthat she spoiled what few man-chances Tess left them, they laughed at\nher as hard as they could laugh.\n\nGrace's slow anger had been getting hotter and hotter in her. That shot\nof Tess's, and the girls all laughing at her, brought it to a boil.\n\n\"Who be'st thou, to open thy ugly mouth to me?\" she jerked out, with\na squeak in her voice and her blue eyes blazing. \"Who be'st thou,\nanyway? Who knows the father or the mother of thee? Who knows what foul\nfolk in what foul land bore thee? Dog-tag thou may'st, but--mark my\nwords--naught will come of it: because thou'rt not fit for John Heath\nor for any other honest man to have dealings with--thou rotten upcast\nof the sea!\"\n\nTess was holding her head high and was scornful-looking when this\nspeech began; but the ending of it, so Mary Benacre told my mother,\nseemed like a knife in her heart. Her face went a sort of a pasty\nwhite, so Mary said; and she seemed to choke, somehow, and put her hand\nup to her throat in a fluttering kind of way as if her throat hurt her.\nAnd then she sort of staggered, and made a grab at the boat she was\nstanding by and leaned against it--looking, so Mary said, as if she was\nlike to die.\n\n\"Mayhap now thou'lt keep quiet a bit,\" Grace said, with her hands on\nher fat hips and her elbows out; and with that, and a flounce at her,\nturned away. The other girls, all except Mary, went along with Grace;\nbut not talking, and most of them scared-looking: feeling, like\nenough, as men would feel standing by at the end of a knife-fight, when\none man is down with a cut that has done for him and there is a smell\nof blood in the air.\n\nMary staid behind--she was a good sort, was Mary Benacre--and went to\nTess and tried to comfort her. Tess didn't answer her, but just looked\nat her with a pitiful sort of stare out of her black eyes that Mary\nsaid was like the look of some poor dumb thing that had no other way of\ntelling how bad its hurt was. And then, rousing herself up, Tess pushed\nMary away from her and started for home on a run. Mary did not follow\nher, but later on she came and told my mother just what had happened\nand gave her Grace Gryce's words.\n\nIt was well that Mary came, that way, and told a clear story about it\nall. What Tess told--when she came flying into the house and caught\nmy mother around the neck and put her poor head on my mother's breast\nand went off into a passion of crying there--was such a muddle that my\nmother knew only that Grace Gryce had said something to her that was\nwickedly cruel. Tess cried and cried, as if she'd cry the very life out\nof her; and kept sobbing out that she was a sea upcast, and a nobody's\ndaughter, and that the sea would have done better by her had it\ndrowned her, and that she hoped she'd die soon and be forgotten--until\nshe drove my mother almost wild.\n\nAnd so it went for a long while with her, my mother petting her and\ncrying over her, until at last--the feel, I suppose, of my mother's\nwarm love for her getting into her poor hurt heart and comforting\nher--she began to quiet down. Then my mother got her to bed--she\nwas as weak as water--and made a pot of bone-set tea for her; and\npretty soon after she'd drunk a cup or two of it she dropped off to\nsleep. She still was sleeping when Mary Benacre came and told the\nwhole story; and so stirred up my mother's anger--and she was a very\ngentle-natured woman, my mother was--that it was all she could do, she\nsaid afterwards, not to go straight off to Grace Gryce and give her a\nbeating with her own hands.\n\n\nVI\n\nWhen Tess came to breakfast the next morning it gave me a real turn to\nlook at her. Somehow, at a single jump, she seemed to have changed from\na girl to a woman--and to an old woman at that. Suddenly she had got\nto be all withered like, and the airs that she used to give herself and\nall the pretty ways of her were gone. She just moped in a chair in a\ncorner--she who'd never been quiet for five minutes together, any more\nthan a bird--with a far-away look in her beautiful eyes, and the glint\nof tears in them. Sorrow had got into the very bones of her. \"Dost\nthink I really am come of such foul folk that I'm not fit for honest\ncompany?\" she asked my mother--and if she asked that question once that\nmorning she asked it a dozen times.\n\nIn a way, of course, she had known what she was all her life long. \"My\nsea-baby\" was my mother's pet name for her at the first; and by that\npet-name, when most tender with her, my mother called her till the\nlast. How she had come to us, how I had found her where the waves had\nleft her and had carried her home in my little tired arms, she had been\ntold over and over again. Sometimes she used to make up stories about\nherself in her light-fancied way: telling us that she was a great lady\nof Spain, and that some fine morning the great Spanish lord her father\nwould come to Southwold by some chance or other, and would know her by\nthe chain and the locket, and would take her home with him and marry\nher to a duke--or to a prince, even--in her own land. We'd see that\nshe'd be pretending to herself while she told them to us that these\nstories were true, and I think that she did half believe in them. But\nit was not real believing that she had in them; it was the sort of\nbelieving that you have in things in dreams. Her love was given to my\nmother and to my father--and to me, too, though not in the way that I\nwanted it--and we were the true kinsfolk of her heart. On our side,\nwe all so loved her, and made her feel so truly that she was our very\nown, that the thought of her being a nobody's child never had a chance\nto get into her mind. And her own fancies about herself--always that\nher own dream people were great people in the dream land where they\nlived--kept her from seeing the other chance of the matter: that they\nas well might be mean people, who would put shame on her should ever\nshe come to know who they were. Into her head that cruel thought never\ngot until Grace Gryce put it there; and put there with it the crueller\nthought that her being a nobody's child was what made John stand off\nfrom her, he thinking her not fit to be his wife.\n\nTess was fearing, maybe, that even if John had not had that feeling\nabout her he was like to have it after Grace had set him in the way of\nit. And maybe she was thinking, too, that if she had been hurt for the\nsake of him, and so deserved loving pity from him, it was Grace who for\nthe sake of him had done the hurting--and that it was Grace who had\nwon. Our girls are best pleased with the lover who fights to a finish\nsome other man in love with them and well thrashes him. Tess may have\nfancied that John would take it that way; and so end by settling that\nGrace, having the most fire and fight in her, was the most to his mind.\nBut what really came of it all with John, as far as I can make out, was\nthat his getting them fairly set the one against the other cleared his\nthick wits up and brought him to a choice.\n\nAnd so, being in every way sorrowful, Tess was like a dead girl that\nday; and my heart was just breaking for her. When dinner time came she\nroused up a bit and helped my mother, as she always did--though my\nmother wanted her to keep resting--and tried in a pitiful sort of way\nto talk a little and to pretend that she was not in bitter pain; but\nthose pretty feet of hers, so light always, dragged after her in her\nwalking, and she was all wizened-looking, and there were black marks\nunder her beautiful sorrowing eyes. My mother helped to make talk with\nher, though my mother was wiping her own tears away when she got the\nchance; but as for me, I was tongue-tied by the hurt and the anger in\nme and could not say a word. What I was thinking was, how glad I'd be\nto wring Grace Gryce's neck for her if only she was a man!\n\nAfter dinner I went out to a bench in front of our house, but a bit\naway from it, and sat there trying to comfort myself with a pipe--and\nnot finding much even in a pipe to comfort me--until the sun, all\nyellow, began to drop down toward the Gun Hill into a bad looking\nyellow sky. All the while I had the tail of my eye bearing on our door,\nand at last I saw Tess come out of it. She took a quick look at the\nback of me, sitting quiet there; and then, I not turning toward her,\noff she walked along the edge of the cliff to the northward. At first\nI didn't know what to do--thinking that if she wanted to be alone I\nought to leave her to her loneliness--and I sat on and smoked another\npipe before I could make up my mind. But the longer I sat there the\nstronger my drawing was to go to her. What was hurting her most, as\nI well enough knew, was the thought of having neither kith nor kin\nfor herself, along with the dread that even if she found her people\nthey might only be a shame to her--and that was a hurt that having a\nhusband would cure for her, seeing that she would get a new and a good\nrating in the world when she got her husband's name. And so, at last,\nI started after her to tell her all that was in the heart of me; and\nthinking more, and this is the truth, of what I could do to comfort her\nby taking the sting out of Grace Gryce's words than of how in that same\nway I could win my own happiness.\n\nI walked on so far--across the dip in the land where the old river was,\nand up on the cliffs again--that I began to think she had turned about\ninland and so had gone that way home. But at last I came up with her,\non the very top of Covehithe Ness.\n\nShe was sitting at the cliff-edge, bent forward a little with her\nelbows on her knees and her face in her hands; and as I came close to\nher I saw that she was crying in that quiet sort of way that people cry\nin when they have touched despair. I walked so softly on the grass that\nshe did not hear my footsteps; but she was not put out when she looked\nup and saw me standing over her--by which I think, and am the happier\nfor thinking it, that she had not gone there of set purpose to meet\nwith John.\n\n\"Sit thee down here, George. I'm glad thou'rt come,\" she said, and she\nreached me her hand.\n\nWhen I was on the grass beside her--she still keeping her hand in mine,\nas if the touch of something that loved her was a comfort to her--she\nhad nothing to say for a bit, but just leaned her head against my\nshoulder and cried softly there.\n\nThe tide was out and a long stretch of the Barnard Bank lay bared below\nus, with here and there the black bones of some dead ship lying buried\nin them sticking up from the sands. Slicing deep in the bank was the\nWreck Gat, with the last of the ebb running out through it from the\nCovehithe Channel and the undercut sides of it falling down into the\nwater and melting away. At the edge of it was the sunken ship that\nhad made it: the ship that had brought Tess to us from her birth-land\nbeyond the seas. As I have said, no more of the wreck showed than her\nbroken stern-post: a bit of black timber, all jagged with twisted iron\nbolts and weed-grown and barnacled, upstanding at one side of the\nchannel from the water and not high out of it even at low tide. When\nthe tide was in, and any sort of a sea was running, you stood a good\nchance of finding just where it was by having your boat stove on it:\nfor then it did not show at all, except now and then in the hollow of\nthe waves.\n\nTess was looking down on it, her head still resting on my shoulder, and\nafter a while she said: \"If only we could dig that ship up, George,\nwe might find what would tell that I'm not come of foul folk, after\nall\"--and then she began to cry again in the same silent sort of way.\nI couldn't get an answer for her--what she said hurt me so, and she\ncrying on my shoulder, and I feeling the beating of her heart.\n\n\"It was good of thee, George,\" she went on again, presently, \"to save\nthe baby life of me; but it's a true truth thou'dst have done me more\nof a kindness hadst thou just thrown me back into the sea. I'd be glad\nto be there now, George. Down there under the water it would make no\ndifference what sort of folk I come of. And I'd be resting there as I\ncan't rest here--for down there my pain would be gone.\"\n\nMy throat was so choked up that I had hard work to get my words out of\nit, and when they did come they sounded queer. \"Tess! Tess!\" I said.\n\"Thou'lt kill me dead talking that way. As if the like of thee could\ncome of foul folk! A lord duke would be the least to be fit father to\nthee--and proud of thee he well might be! But what does it matter,\nTess, what thy folk were who owned thee at the beginning? They gave\nthee to the sea's keeping--and the sea gave thee to me. By right of\nfinding, thou'rt mine. It was I who found thee, down on the shingle\nthere, and from the first minute that ever I laid eyes on thee I loved\nthee--and the only change in me has been that always I've loved thee\nmore and more. Whether thy people were foul folk or fair folk is all\none to me. It's thyself that I'm loving--and with every bit of the love\nthat is in my heart. Let me make thee the wife of me, Tess--and then\nthou'lt have no need to fret about who thy forbears were for thou'lt\nhave no more to do with them, being made a part of me and mine.\"\n\nI talked at such a rate, when I did get set a-going, that my own words\nran away with me; and I got the feeling that they ran away with Tess\ntoo. But when I had ended, and she lifted up her head from my shoulder\nand looked straight into the eyes of me, I knew by what her eyes had\nin them--before ever she said a word back to me--that what I wanted\nmost in the whole world for myself I could not have.\n\nIt seemed to me an hour before she spoke, she all the time looking\nstraight into my eyes and her own eyes full of tears. At last she did\nspeak. \"George,\" said she, \"if I could be wife to thee, as thou'dst\nhave me be, I'd go down on my knees and thank God! But it can't be,\nGeorge. It can't be! I've set my heart.\"\n\nThere was no doubting what she said. In the sound of her voice there\nwas something that seemed as much as her words to settle the matter for\ngood and all. Whenever I am at a funeral and hear the reading of the\nburial service it brings back to me the sound of her voice that day.\nOnly there is a promise of hope in the burial service--and that there\nwas not for me in Tess's words.\n\n\"It's John that's between us?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, speaking slow, \"it's John.\" She was quiet for a minute\nand then went on again, still speaking slow: \"I don't understand it\nmyself, George. Thou'rt a better-hearted man than he is, and I truly\nthink I love him less than I do thee. But--but I love him in another\nway.\"\n\n\"Damn him!\" said I.\n\nThat got out before I could stop it, but when it had got out I wasn't\nsorry. It told what I felt then--and it tells what I feel now. John's\ntaking her from me was stealing, and nothing less. We were together\nwhen I found her, he and I; but I first saw her and I first touched\nher--and he gave me his share in her, though he had no real share in\nher, when he knew what my finding was. And so his taking her from me\nwas stealing: and that is God's truth!\n\nTess said nothing back to me. She only looked at me sorrowful for a\nminute, and then looked down again at the bit of wreck on the sands. By\nthe sigh she gave I knew pretty well what was in her mind.\n\nI'd had my answer, and that was the end of it. \"I'll be going now,\nTess,\" I said; and I got up and she got up with me. I was not feeling\nsteady on my legs, and like enough I had a queer look on me. As for\nTess, she was near as white as a dead woman, though some of her\nwhiteness may have come from the yellow sunshine on her out of the\nwestern sky. Up there on top of the Ness we still had the sun with us,\nthough he was almost gone among the foul weather yellow clouds.\n\n\"Thou'lt try to forgive me, George,\" she said, speaking low, and her\nmouth sort of twitching.\n\n\"I love thee, Tess,\" I said; \"and where there's love there can be no\ntalk of forgiveness. But John has the hate of me, and I tell thee\nfairly I'll hurt him if I can!\"\n\nWith that I left her--there on Covehithe Ness, over the very spot where\nthe sea brought her to me--and went walking back along the cliff-edge:\nand not seeing anything clearly because I was thinking about John, and\nwhat I'd like to do to him, and there was a sort of red blur before my\neyes.\n\nAfter a while I turned and looked back. My eyes had cleared a bit,\nbut what I saw made them red again. Tess was not alone on the Ness.\nJohn was with her. The two stood out strong in the last of the\nyellow sunshine against a cloud-bank on the far edge of the sky. I\nsuppose that Tess being hurt that way for him brought John to his\nbearings--making him love her the more for sorrow's sake, and for\nanger's sake making him ready to throw Grace Gryce over. Like enough\nhe had been watching for his chance to get to her, waiting till I was\ngone. Anyway, there he was--and I knew what he was saying to her as\nwell as if I'd heard the words. It is no wonder that the blood got\ninto my eyes again as I started back along the path. But I did not go\nfar. Somehow I managed to pull myself together and turn again. What I\nhad to settle with John Heath could be settled best when he and I were\nalone.\n\n\nVII\n\nWhen Tess came home to supper that night she was all changed again: her\nlooks gay once more, and her step light, and a sort of flutter about\nher lips--as if she was wanting to smile and was trying not to--and a\nsoft look in her eyes that I never had seen there, but knew the meaning\nof and found the worst of all.\n\nI couldn't eat my supper; and got up presently and went out leaving\nit--my mother looking after me wondering--and walked up and down on the\ncliff-edge in the darkness with my heart all in a blaze of hate for\nJohn. For a good while I had been looking for what I knew was in the\nway of coming to me; but it was different, and worse, and hurt more\nthan I had counted on, when at last it came. Out there in the darkness\nI staid until the night was well on--not wanting for a while to hear\nthe sound of Tess's voice nor to lay eyes on her. Not until I was\nsure, by the lights being out in the house, that she'd gone to bed, did\nI go in again. My mother was waiting waking for me. She came to me in\nthe dark and put her arms around me and kissed me; by which I knew that\nTess had been telling her--and knew, too, she always having looked to\nthe wedding of us, that her heart was sore along with mine. But I could\nnot bear even her soft touch on the hurt that I had. I just kissed her\nback again and broke away from her and went to bed. And in the very\nearly morning, not having slept much, I slipped out of the house before\neither she or Tess was stirring and down to my boat and so away to sea.\n\nWhat I was after was to get some quiet time to myself that would steady\nme before I had things out with John. I was not clear in my mind how\nI meant to settle with him. I did know, though, that I meant to have\nsome sort of a fair fight with him that would end in my killing him or\nin him killing me--and I knew that to tackle him with my head all in a\nbuzz would be to throw too many chances his way. And so I got away in\nmy boat, at the day-dawn, to the sea's quietness: where I could clear\nmy head of the buzzing that was in it and put some sort of shape to my\nplans.\n\nHad I been in my sober senses that morning I never should have gone\naway seaward at all. Backing up the promise of the yellow sunset of\nthe night before, pink clouds were showing in the eastern sky as I\nstarted; and as I sailed on in loneliness--standing straight out from\nthe land on a soft leading wind from the south-west westerly--the pink\nturned to a pale red and then to a deep red, and at last the sun came\nup out of the water a great ball of fire. The look of the sea, too,\nall in an oily bubble, and the set of the ground-swell, told me plain\nenough--even without the sunrise fairly shouting it in the ears of\nme--that a change of wind was coming before mid-day, and that pretty\nsoon after the wind shifted it would be blowing a gale.\n\nI will say this, though: If I'd missed seeing the red sunrise--and\nall the more if I'd been full of happiness and my wits gone a\nwool-gathering--I might have thought from the look and the feel of the\nwater, and from the set of the high clouds, that the wind would not\nblow to hurt anything for a good twelve hours. That much I'll say by\nway of excuse for John. Like enough he slept late that morning--through\nlying awake the night before thinking what he'd be likely to\nthink--and so missed seeing the sun's warning. When he did get away in\nhis boat it was well past eight o'clock; and there was no man on the\nbeach when he started, so they told me, to counsel him. And, all being\nsaid, even a good sailor--and that John was--starting off as he was to\nbuy a wedding-ring might not look as sharp as he ought to look at the\nsea and at the sky.\n\nAs to my own sailing seaward--I seeing the storm-signals and knowing\nthe meaning of them--I have no more to say than that I was hot for\na fight with anything that morning, and didn't care much what I had\nit with or how it came. Anybody who knows how to sail a boat, and to\nsail one well, knows what joy there is in getting the better of foul\nwinds and rough seas for the mere fun of the thing; but there is still\nmore joy in a tussle of that sort when you are in a towering rage.\nThen you are ready to push the fight farther by taking more and bigger\ndeath-chances: since a man in bitter anger--at least in such bitter\nanger as I was in then--does not care much whether he pulls through\nsafely or gets drowned. And so I went on my course seaward, on that\nsoft wind blowing more and more lazily, until the coast line was lost\nin the water behind me: knowing well enough, and glad to have it that\nway, that the wind would lull and lull until it failed me, and that\nthen I would get a blow out of the northeast that would give me all the\nfight I wanted, and perhaps a bit to spare!\n\nBut because I meant my fight to be a good one, and meant to win it, I\ngot myself ready for it. When the wind did fail--the sun was put out\nby that time, and from high up in the northeast the scud was flying\nover me--I took in and snugged away everything but my mainsail, and\nput a double reef in that with the reef-points knotted to hold. Then\nI waited, drifting south a little--the flood having made half an hour\nbefore, and the set of the ebb taking me that way.\n\nI did not have to wait long. Out of the mist, banked thick to the\nnorth-eastward, came the moaning that a strong wind makes when it's\nrushing down on you; then from under the mist swept out a dark riffle\nthat broke the oily bubble of the water and put life into it; and\nthen the wind got to me with a bang. There was more of it than I had\ncounted on having at the first, showing that the gale behind it was a\nstrong one and coming down fast; but I had the nose of my boat pointed\nup to meet it, and with no more than a bit of a rattle I got away\nclose-hauled. There was no going back to Southwold, of course. What I\nwas heading for was the Pakefield Gat into the Stanford Channel, and so\nto the harbour at Lowestoft; and I pretty well knew from the first that\nno matter how close I bit into the wind--and my boat was a weatherly\none--I had my work cut out for me if I meant to keep from going to\nleeward of the Pakefield Gat in the gale that was coming on.\n\nGo to leeward I did, and badly. When I raised the coast again, and a\nlift of the mist gave me my bearings, I saw that Kessingland tower was\nmy landfall. As to working up from there to the Pakefield Gat--the\nedge of the gale by that time being fairly on me--I knew that it was\nclean impossible. I still had two chances left--one being to cross the\nBarnard by the Wreck Gat, and the other to round into Covehithe Channel\nacross the tail of the bank. To the first of these the wind would help\nme; but I knew that even with the wind's help it would be ticklish\nwork trying to squeeze through that narrow place at the half ebb--when\nthe strong outset of the current would be meeting the inpour of the\nstorm-driven sea. It would be better, so I settled after a minute's\nthinking, to pass that chance and take the other--which would be a\nfairly sure one, though a close one too. And so I wore around--with a\nbad wallow in the trough of the sea that set everything to shaking for\na minute--and got on my new course pretty well on the wind.\n\nJust as I was making ready for wearing, and so had my hands full, I\nglimpsed the sail of a boat in the mist up to windward; and when I was\ncome about she was abeam to leeward, showing her high weather side to\nme, not twenty yards away. Then I saw that it was John Heath's boat,\nand that John was standing up alone in her at the helm. Why the fool\nhad not staid safe in Lowestoft harbour, God only knows. But it's only\nfair to him, again, to say that he must have got away from Lowestoft\na good while before the wind shifted; and like enough he would have\nworked down to Southwold, and got his boat safe beached there before\ntrouble came, if the calm had not caught him sooner than it did me--he\nbeing all the time close under the land.\n\n\nVIII\n\nSome of my rage had gone out of me in my fight to windward in the\ngale's teeth; but when I saw John close by me there it all came back\nto me. For half a minute the thought was in my head to run him down\nand sink him--and I had the wind of him and could have done it. Even\nin my rage, though, I could not play a coward trick like that on him;\nand before I could make any other plan up he set me in the way of one\nhimself.\n\n\"I'm making for the Wreck Gat,\" he sung out. \"Give me a lead in,\nGeorge--'tis better known to thee than to me.\"\n\nHad I stopped to think about it, his asking me to lead him in would\nhave been a puzzle to me, he being just as good a sailor as I was\nand just as well knowing every twist of the sea and the sands. But I\ndidn't stop to think about the queerness of what he wanted--why he was\nfor making things double safe by my leading him is clear enough to me\nnow--because my wits were at work at something else.\n\nWhile the words were coming out of his mouth--it all was in my head\nlike a flash--I saw my way to settling with him, and to settling fair.\nHe was crazy to want to try for it through the Wreck Gat on the half\ntide, with the run of the ebb meeting the onset of the breakers and a\nwhole gale blowing. But his being crazy that way was his look out,\nnot mine. I'd give him the lead in that he wanted--asking him to take\nnothing that I didn't take first myself, and giving him a better chance\nthan I had because I'd be setting the course for him and he'd have\nonly to follow on. That either of us would pull through would be as\nit might be. As to my own chance, such as it was, I was ready for it:\nknowing that I would be no worse off dead with him than I was living\nwith him--and a long sight better off if I put him in the way of the\ndrowning that would finish him, and yet myself won through alive.\n\nThat was what got into my head like a flash while he was hailing me,\nand mighty pleased I was with it. \"Follow on,\" I sung out. \"I'll give\nthee a lead.\" And to myself I was saying: \"Yes, a lead to hell!\"\n\n\"All right,\" he sung out back to me--and let his boat fall off a bit\nthat I might draw ahead of him. As he dropped astern, and the uptilt of\nhis weather rail no longer hid the inside of his boat from me, I saw\nthat there was a biggish bunch of something covered with a tarpaulin'\nin the stern sheets close by his feet. But I gave no thought to it: all\nmy thought being fixed on what was ahead of me and him in the next\nhalf hour. I was glad that we had to wait a little. Every minute of\nwaiting meant more wind, and so a bigger fight in the Wreck Gat between\nthe out-running current and the in-running sea. I had a feeling in my\nbones that I would pull through and that he wouldn't, and I was keen\nto see the smash of him as his boat took the sands. After that smash\ncame, the rest of his life could be counted in minutes and seconds--as\nhe floundered and drowned in that wild tumble of sand-thickened waves.\nSo I'd have done with him and be quit of him; and would have a good\nshow--if I didn't drown along with him--for winning Tess for my own. If\nI did drown with him, or if--not being drowned--Tess would have none of\nme, there still would be this much to the good: I'd have served him out\nfor crossing me in my deep heart-wish, and I'd have made certain that\nhe and she never could come together in this world alive.\n\nAll that I was thinking as I stood on ahead of him, bucketing through\nthe waves that every minute were heavier with the churned up sand. And\nI also was thinking, and I remember laughing as the thought came to me,\nthat there was a sort of rightness in the way things were working out\nwith us--seeing that the ship that had brought me my Tess, and the sea\nthat had given her to me, together were making the death-trap for the\nman who had stolen away from me her love.\n\nThe wind was well up to a gale as we drove on together, me leading him\nby a half dozen boats' lengths, and from all along to leeward of us\ncame to us through the mist a sort of a groaning roar as the breakers\nwent banging and grinding on the Barnard Bank. Nothing but having the\nwind and the sea both with us, when we stood in for the gat, saved us\nfrom foundering; and yet that same also put us in peril of it, because\nwe had a wide open chance of being pooped by the great following waves\nwhich came hanging over and dragging at our sterns.\n\nThe mist thinned as we got closer in shoreward, showing me the\nsand-heavy surf waiting for its chance to scour the life out of us;\nbut also showing me Covehithe Ness, and Covehithe church tower off to\nthe left of it, and so giving me the points that I wanted to steer\nby. As for the look of the Wreck Gat, when we opened it, the waves\nblustered over it so big, and were all in such a whirl and a fury with\nthe current meeting them, that only a crazy man--as I have said--ever\nwould have tried for it. Just about crazy I then was, and the look\nof it suited me. In that sea the narrow channel was so lashed by the\nbreakers running off from the sands to windward of it that there was\nno sign of a cleft anywhere. No matter how we steered, getting through\nit would be just hit or miss with us--and with all my heart and soul I\nhoped that it would be hit for me and miss for John.\n\nTo make in, I had to bear up a little; and getting the wind by even\nthat little abeam gave my boat a send to leeward that was near to doing\nfor me. I was glad of it, though; because I knew that John would get\nthat same send in the wake of me--and with more chance of its finishing\nhim, his boat being a deal less weatherly than mine. And so--as I\ngrazed the sands, and after the graze went on safe again--my heart was\nlight with the thought that I'd got the better of him at last.\n\n[Illustration: \"THEN I COULD USE MY EYES TO LOOK BEHIND ME\"]\n\nThere was no looking back, though, to see what had gone with him. All\nmy eyes were needed for my steering. Everywhere about me the sand-heavy\nwater was hugely rising in a great roar and tumble; and as for the\nsands under it, and there the worst danger was, it was just good luck\nor bad luck about striking them--and that was all that you could say.\nTwice I felt a jar under me as the boat went deep in the sea-trough;\nbut I did not strike hard enough to hurt me, and I lifted again so\nquick that I did not broach-to. And then, when I thought that I was\nfairly through, and had safe water right ahead of me, there came a\nbang on the boat's side--as the sea-trough took me down again--that\nnear stove me: and right at the side of me, so close that I could have\ntouched it as I lay for a second there in the deep wave-hollow, was the\nstern-post of Tess's sand-bedded ship rising black out of the scum and\nfoam. One foot farther to leeward and the jagged iron of it would have\nhad me past praying for. But it did no harm to me--and as the water\ncovered it again I shot on beyond it into what seemed to me, after the\nsea I'd hammered through, almost a mill-pond on the lee side of the\nbank.\n\nThen I could use my eyes to look behind me: and what I saw will stay\nfixed in them till the copper pennies cover them and I see with them no\nmore.\n\nIn spite of his send to leeward at the start, John had come through\nafter me without taking the ground; but he had gone farther to leeward\nthan I had, and so was set--when smooth water lay close ahead of\nhim--fairly in death's way. As I looked back I saw only the bow of\nhis boat, with the scrap of sail above it, riding on the top of an\noncoming wave. Then the boat tilted forward, and came tearing down the\nwave-front at a slant toward me, and I saw the whole length of her:\nand what burned my eyes out was seeing Tess there, standing brave and\nsteady, the two hands of her gripping fast the mast.\n\nIt was not much more than a second that I had to look at her. With a\nsharp sound of wood splintering, that I heard above the noise that\nthe sea was making, the boat struck fair and full on that iron set\ntimber--and then the wave that had sent her there was playing with the\nscattered bits of her, and the sand-heavy breakers were tumbling about\nthe bodies of the two that she had borne.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf the sea meant to give me back my dead Tess again, I knew where\nI should find her--and there I did find her. On the shingle under\nCovehithe Ness she was lying: come to me there at the last, as she came\nto me there at the first, a sea upcast. That last time she was all\nmine. There was no John left living to steal her away from me. And if\nshe was not mine as I wanted her, at least she never was his at all. In\nthat far I had my will and way over him, and for that much I am glad.\n\nAnd so, she being all my own, home along the beach for the second time\nI carried her. It was a wonder to me, as she lay in my arms, how light\nshe was--and she so tall!\n\n\nTHE END","title":"In Great Waters: Four Stories","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":46270}