LITMIR.BIZ

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there? That’s Africa!”

      Dr. Paul Willard gestured far across the night to where, in the vast dark, a spurt of flame glowed like a blood-ruby, died, then trembled forth again.

      “Africa?” the girl questioned vaguely. A nameless awe crept round her heart, in presence of that unseen emptiness looming away to the inverted bowl of sky—a fathomless sky, spattered with great refulgent stars, among which, overhead, the funnels of the Sutherland traced smoky patterns. “Africa?”

      “A little corner of it, anyway,” the doctor answered, smiling at her tone. “Cape Roxo light. By two bells of the middle watch we’ll be off the coast of Guinea, running through Bissagos Islands—a bad place at best. I never liked it, and I’ve surgeoned on ‘old Suth’ for more than seven years. Don’t like it now, its reefs and cannibal wreckers and all, even with Captain Lockhart on the bridge.”

      The girl made no answer, but she leaned her arms across the rail, swaying as the ship rolled, and gazed out into the unknown. Steadily the Strathglass liner clove the fugitive seas, creaming them astern in surges that hissed away into the black.

      He risked a side glance at her.

      Never had she seemed quite so beautiful to him as under the lantern light which gleamed upon her heavy yellow braids of hair, her frost-white gown. At sight of her delicate, somewhat pale face, his smile waned. No living man—least of all Willard, in the passion which had obsessed him ever since Ethel Armstrong and her crippled uncle had set foot upon the Sutherland’s deck—could have felt amusement in presence of that gentle, earnest seriousness.

      “Somehow, do you know,” she mused at length, “I feel a bit afraid? It’s all so empty! And just to know that Africa is over there.” A gesture rounded out the thought. “I sha’n’t quite like it till we’re at the quay in Cape Town.”

      “When you’ll immediately forget the trip, the boat, and—every­one on board?” he led along; but she ignored the opening. Her mood was far from banter. The doctor, too, repented of his speech, the clumsiness of which jarred upon the majesty and wonder of that tropic night. “Oh, well, you’ll see things differently tomorrow,” he retrieved himself. “Quite differently, when the big red sun rolls up over the coast and splashes gold across the sea.”

      “Perhaps,” she half assented. “But tomorrow is so far away. I think I’ll go below. This air stifles me.”

      He nodded.

      “Yes; I understand. I used to feel it so myself, before I got quite used to it.” His powers of speech had never seemed more pitifully crude.

      He helped her down the steep companionway. Then, after a perfunctory good night from her, came up again to the quarterdeck.

      “Great guns, what gloom!” he muttered. “Why, India ink is pale beside it. I don’t half like the way these offshore swells are running, either—with Bissagos still ahead of us. Can’t say I’m used to this particular bit of Africa even now. No wonder that she—Ethel—feels so shuddery.”

      A moment he pondered in silence.

      “That’s an upper-class privilege, anxiety is. A mere proletarian like me has no right to it. No, nor yet to look at an upper-class woman. For such, we aren’t real men—just official objects.”

      He leaned upon the railing where her arms had lain, and for a long time stared off across the dark where, on Cape Roxo, winked that dim, retreating eye of flame.

      II.

      The doctor found no sleep till long past midnight. Even with his cabin window slid far back, the tepid land breeze choked him, and his thoughts were weft of hot rebellion, longings, and misery. He tossed wide-eyed in his berth, heard the ship’s bell dole out the eternal hours, then the halves, torturing himself with images of Cape Town and the approaching separation, which (only too well he knew) must be forever. Midnight was long gone, when he lost himself in troublous dreams of distant inaccessible things, never to be reached by him.

      Toward early morning something flung him back to consciousness—a grinding, raking craunch that shivered the whole fabric of the ship, and roused him to the knowledge he was struggling on his cabin floor, which slanted dizzily. He clambered up, mazed and wit-struck for a moment, groped for the electric-button, and snapped on the light.

      As the glare dazzled him, the Sutherland pitched nauseously again; and far below he heard a hideous gnawing and rasping, as of stony Titan jaws devouring steel. Then came sharp cries, oaths, and orders hoarsely bawled, and heavy feet that ran unsteadily along the decks. The pulsing engines suddenly grew still.

      “Bissagos Reef! Ethel!” These were his only thoughts.

      He leaped into some clothes, snatched his revolver, jerked open the cabin door, and ran out in his shirt-sleeves to the main saloon. It was already filled with grotesque, excited passengers. A babel swelled tumultuously, with high-pitched questions, curses, and screams.

      “Steady!” he shouted. “Steady, now! No danger if you all keep cool!”

      Hands clutched at him; he staved them off. “Lord!” thought he. “What cattle human beings in a panic are!”

      He heard the purser’s voice that reinforced his own—heard other officers—knew that for a moment his presence might be spared.

      “I must go!” he told himself; for in the thickening mob he caught no glimpse of Ethel or the invalid.

      “I’ve got to find them anyway!”

      He shoved by main force, along the up-tilted floor, toward their cabins. From behind him, on the aft staircase, Captain Lockhart’s mellow Scotch voice boomed out: “We’re good for fufteen mennets yet! No danger if ye’ll tak’ it easy—all han’s to th’ boats! Weemen fairrst!”

      Suddenly he came on Ethel and her palsied uncle. The old man’s halting steps had held her back. A flash of potent admiration lightened through Willard’s soul at the vision of the girl, pale and afraid, yet not startled or hastened from her duty.

      She came onward, helping the pitiful, twisted figure, step by step—a figure doubly grotesque now, in scant, disheveled clothing, with sweat of pain on the knit brow and terror staring from the widened eyes. She looked, the doctor thought, most dignified and noble in her long, loose dressing gown, over which the yellow braids hung to below her girdle. A sort of fine simplicity enshrouded her. And though he had witnessed bold, hard men in peril, he thought that never had he seen so brave a thing as that gently bred girl holding back her steps, timing her pace to the hobbling of the senile creature who now clung to her for safety.

      “What is it—tell me! Are we going down?” she cried to him, her voice trembling a little, but quite clear above the uproar of the crowd or the grinding and tearing of the ship. Her look was full of confidence; even in her fear he found no trace of panic. “Are we lost? What’s happened, can you tell me?”

      “We’re on Bissagos—probably no danger.” His body shielded her from the stampeding pack that weltered past them, herded by a dozen of the officers and crew. His nerves were ice. He felt nothing save joy and high elation at this chance to save her life, at this thought that Ethel now was looking up to him, trusting him for guidance and deliverance.

      “We mayn’t break up—for some time yet!” he shouted, bending toward her. “No danger—lots of boats—the mainland near! Come on, though—there’s no time to lose!”

      He stooped and gathered the cripple in his arms, then lurched ahead through the wild mob. Ethel followed; he felt the grasp of her hand upon his shoulder, and strange, mad thoughts seethed up in him.

      Thus presently, jostling and buffeted, they won through the panic and the uproar of the open lower deck, which shelved off sickeningly to the very water’s edge.

      The night still gloomed impenetrable round the wounded ship. The wind had risen and whipped furiously the wild, green flares which flung sick shadows over the features of the dead.

      Momentarily the

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