The Flying Death - Samuel Hopkins Adams (story reading .txt) 📗

wooden—pound pieces. Get most of ‘em—life-buoy—all right.”

At a word from Miss Johnston, Haynes shouted in Colton’s ear: “Come down to the beach. When she smashes, some of ‘em may come in there.”

“Not alive surely?” cried Colton, glancing at the surf.

“Yes,” the girl’s clear voice answered, with an accent of absolute certainty. “We must watch.”

Down a sharp declivity they made their way to the gully, which debouched upon a sand beach. Johnston, the veteran, who had preceded them, was gathering driftwood for a fire, with a practical appreciation of the possibilities.

“Bear a hand, Helga!” he shouted. “And you, Mr. Haynes!”

Almost before he knew it, Colton too was hard at work dragging timber to the centre marked by the lanterns. A clutch on his arm called his attention to what was going on above him, as Johnston pointed seaward. In the glint of the lightning, he saw clear against the windy void a huddled mass, at which the waves leaped and clutched, as it moved steadily shoreward. Another glimpse showed it risen above the reach of the breakers. It was a breeches-buoy, bearing its first burden.

“Line’s working all right!” yelled the old coastguard. “They ought to get ‘em all in.”

Presently another traveller came in foot by foot over that slender and hopeful thread, then a third and a fourth, until seven of the crew were huddled on the cliff. Out went the breeches-buoy again, for there were three lives yet to be saved, when in a broad electric glare a monster surge could be seen sweeping the schooner up. There was a crash of timbers, a wild cry, and the line fell slack from the cliff-head. Old Johnston dropped to his knees on the sand and bared his head, but only for a moment; for he was up again and had set the pile of fuel burning with a cleverly placed twist of paper.

Up leaped the flames. A brilliant glow wavered and spread. Colton, stupid with horror, stood entranced, while Johnston, Helga and Haynes ran, as if to established stations, along the surf’s edge, the old man nearest the wreck, then Haynes, and finally the girl. Of a sudden, Colton came to himself with a dismal and unaccustomed sensation of being out of it. No one had asked him to help. He was just a guest, a negligible quantity when men’s and women’s work was to be done.

“What a useless thing the average summer boarder must be!” he thought, as he passed beyond the girl and bent his attention on the boiling cauldron of the ocean.

He had not long to wait. On the foaming crest of a breaker something dark appeared, and vanished in the smother of the surge as it whizzed up the sand. Another instant, and it was rolling within a rod of the young fellow, showing the set, still face of a man. Colton hardly had to wade ankle-deep to seize the form; but the back drag tore at his feet with a power that amazed and appalled him. To haul the man ashore took all his unusual strength. As he threw the form over his shoulder and ran toward the fire, he became aware of a man and a woman approaching from the cliff side. Laying down his burden, he knelt beside it. One look was enough. The man’s skull had been crushed like an egg-shell. Mechanically he felt for the pulse, when Professor Ravenden’s precise tones, rendered a little less pedantic by the effort required to overcome the gale, reached his ear:

“Perhaps I can be of some service. I am not entirely unskilled in medical subjects.”

Colton shook his head. “He’s beyond all skill,” he answered.

“Oh!” cried a voice from the darkness behind the professor, rising to a shriek. “Look! Helga! Help her!”

At the same moment, Helga’s own ringing voice sounded in a call for aid, abruptly cut short. Colton jumped to his feet and turned. He saw, with a sickening recollection of the waves’ power, which he had just experienced, the girl up to her knees in water, her strong young frame braced back and her arms clasping a body. A fringed comber, breaking heavily, was driving a vortex of white water in upon her. It boiled up beyond her, until the two figures were gone. As Colton, with a shout of horror, leaped forward, like a sprinter from the mark, he saw Haynes, running with terrific speed, launch himself head foremost into the swirl of waters, at a rolling mass there.

“Lord! What a tackle!” thought Colton as he ran. “Yet they say that a foot-ball education is of no practical use.”

His own was to come swiftly into play. For though Haynes had caught Helga about the knees, he had no purchase for resistance, and the deadly undertow was dragging them out.

Colton had the athlete’s virtue of thinking swiftly in the stress of action. His was the cool courage that appreciates peril and reasons out the most advantageous encounter. The human flotsam was far beyond his grasp now; but he figured that an approaching surge, sweeping them in shoreward again, would give him his chance,—the only chance,—for the recession in all probability would carry them beyond help. He must meet them feet forward, as a trained player meets and falls upon a foot-ball rolling toward him; thus he might get his heels into the sand, and so anchor them all against the back-drift. If he could not—well, there were no materia medica bottles out there beyond the surf anyhow, and an ocean lullaby would be the sure cure for all sleeplessness.

Fortunately the coming wave was a broad-backed one, on which the tangled figures rode in plain view, and Colton saw, with that thrill of pride in his fellow-being which courage wakes in the courageous, that the girl’s arms still clasped her trove, clinging below the life-preserver which was fastened around the man’s body. Calculating the drift down the beach, Colton moved forward. In they came—nearer—nearer—and to his amazement Colton heard a strangled shout from the waves:

“Get Helga! Never mind me. Get Helga in!”

“I’ll get you too, or break something,” muttered the young man, as with a rush and a leap he plunged feet forward to meet the onset.

It was Haynes that he caught, just above the knees. His heels sunk in the sand. The surge spread, stood, receded. “Here’s tug-of-war in earnest,” thought Colton, as he set the muscles which had helped to win many a victory for his college. The next instant it seemed as if those muscles must rend apart; as if all the might of the unbounded ocean was straining to drag away his prize of lives. He set his face grimly toward the savage waves. His chest was bursting. One heartbeat more he would hold out. Human endeavour could go no further. That heart-throb sledged against his ribs, passed and found the bulldog grip unrelaxed. One more, then! surely the last; after that—abruptly the strain slacked.

A sob of compressed breath burst from Colton. Oh, how good was the full, deep inhalation that followed! How it filled the muscles and inspired the will to the final effort! With a mighty heave he rolled the three clear over his own body up the beach. Then he lay still, for he was tired and sleepy and didn’t care what became of him. He had made a touch-down—anyway. Why didn’t—somebody—pull—them off—him?

“I’ve got ‘em!” twittered a voice in his ear, a dim and ridiculous voice, that nevertheless was like old Johnston’s. “You saved the lot, God bless you!”

“Let me get my arm under his shoulder,” said the calm and precise accents of Professor Ravenden, also in that strange faraway tone.

Oh, thought Dick in sudden but dim enlightenment, they were telephoning. Of course. That’s the way voices sounded over a ‘phone when the wire was working badly. But why should they be telephoning? And how, at the other end of a wire, could they be hauling him, Dick Colton, to his feet?

When consciousness came in on the full flood, Colton found himself staggering toward the fire, with someone’s support. From out the flickering circle of light an angel came to meet him. She seemed a thing born of the wedding of radiance and shadows. The whiteness of her face, rich-hued where the blood flushed the cheek, was enhanced by the dusky masses of her hair. Her lips were parted, and her rounded chest rose and fell palpably with her swift breathing. Her eyes, deep, velvety with the soft glamour of questing womanhood in their liquid depths, looked straight into his. It was his Vision of the hallway.

“Ah, it was splendid!” she said, and there was a thrill in the soft drawl of the voice that went straight to his heart.

She moved forward toward him into the fuller glow of the fire, and Colton, his hungry eyes fixed on hers, thought of the moon emerging from behind a filmy cloud.

“How did you dare?” she pursued. “You saved them all! I—I—want you to take this.”

Mechanically he stretched forth his hand to meet hers, and she pressed into it something light and soft.

“It was nothing,” he said dazedly, wondering. “Thank you. I—my head feels queer—but I—think—I—could—go to sleep—now.”

He lay gently down on the soft sand, which seemed to rise to meet him. Half swooning and wholly engulfed in sleep, he stretched his great bulk and lay gratefully down, and the materia medica bottles trooped out into the troubled night and were lost in its depths.

Dolly Ravenden stood and looked down, musing upon the strong-limbed figure, and at the hand whose fingers, alone of all the frame, were unrelaxed.

“I wonder if I’ve made a mistake,” she said with misgivings which were strange to her positive and rather self-willed character. “Pshaw! No; it is all right.”