His Unknown Wife

Suddenly Madge Forbes remembered, and turned her eyes in that direction. She waved a hand and cried:

“Good-by, trees and rocks! You were kind to me and to all of us! I have not had two such happy weeks since I came to South America!”

Maseden heard, but paid no particular heed. For one thing, he had decided now not to re-open the question of the extraordinary relations between his wife and himself until, if ever, they reached civilization again. For another, he was busily conning the channel and noting the behavior of their clumsy but quite buoyant craft.

He estimated the pace of the current at fully six miles an hour. The raft was traveling about half that rate, which was quite fast enough for his liking, so, although there was a strong breeze from the west, he did not hoist the “sail.” He stood on the port side and Sturgess on the starboard. The two girls were seated on a pile of fir branches behind the mast, which was stayed by ropes in such wise that all four had something to cling to if the raft struck a sunken rock and lurched suddenly.

The project was to drift as far inland as the day’s tide would take them, pole ashore at the nearest suitable place, and repeat the overnight anchoring until they reached smooth water, when they might perhaps make longer voyages. If they ran six miles that day they would have done admirably. Providing Maseden’s calculations as to their precise locality were reasonably accurate, the next day would bring them into a much wider arm of the sea.

Here the conditions might vary, but they would adapt themselves to circumstances, always bearing in mind the exceeding wisdom of the Italian proverb: Che va piano va sano– “He goes safely who goes cautiously.”

But there are other proverbs which are equally applicable to human affairs, and especially to the hazards awaiting rafts floating on unknown waters. For an hour they ran on gaily, with little or no trouble, because the men could see broken water a long way ahead and promptly piloted their argosy towards the open channel.

Then came the unexpected, or, to be exact, the crisis arose which Maseden had foreseen many days earlier, but forgotten as the raft grew strong and seaworthy under their hands.

About four miles from Providence Beach the gap between the two small islands which shut off Hanover Island from its southerly neighbor came into full view. Maseden anticipated a little difficulty at this point, but he was quite unprepared for that which really took place.

He had every reason to believe that the main stream would flow straight ahead until the second island was passed; he meant to land on Hanover Island again, just short of the easterly end of Island Number Two. Therefore he was annoyed, but not alarmed at first, at finding that the current carried the raft into the straits between the islets.

The others, of course, noticed the change of direction, and being well aware of his hopes and plans, asked him in chorus if this deviation mattered.

“I don’t see that it does,” he said. “In any case, we must follow the tide, and if this is the short cut so much the better.”

He told them that which he actually believed. Still, at the back of his head lay an uneasiness hard to account for. The raft was traveling south now, not east, having swept round the bend in magnificent style. The precipitous heights were closing in, but the channel was fully a quarter of a mile in width. He would vastly have preferred skirting the wooded slopes of Hanover Island, because these smaller islets were absolutely barren in this hitherto invisible section, but, having no choice in the matter, silenced his doubts by recalling his first and quite correct theory that the real deep-water passage lay beyond, the Southern Cross having in fact struck several miles north of Nelson Straits.

Owing to the steady narrowing of the waterway the rate at which they traveled was increasing momentarily, though progress was delightfully smooth and easy. The simile did not occur to any of the four until complete disaster had befallen them, but the silent, resistless onrush of the current was ominously suggestive of the course of some great river during the last few miles before it hurls itself over a cataract.

Hanover Island soon vanished from sight altogether, and the towering cliffs on either hand seemed to merge into an unbroken barrier ahead. But the tidal race hurried on, so there must be an outlet, and this presented itself, after a sharp turn to eastward again, when they had covered a couple of miles on the new course.

They were only given the briefest warning of the peril into which they were being carried. The stream flung itself against a great mass of rock, which had been undermined until the upper edge of the precipice hung out fifty feet or more over the rushing waters beneath. A most uncanny maelstrom was thus created.

No sooner had the two men seen the danger than they labored with might and main to slew the raft away to the opposite shore.

They succeeded in avoiding the first jumble of black rocks which lay at the base of the cliff, but the whole character of the stream changed instantly. It became a furious turmoil of broken water. The raft was hurled hither and thither as though by some titanic force, and a few yards farther on was dashed against a second and even more terrifying reef.

The violence of the impact smashed the whole structure to pieces. Had not the logs been arranged in tiers crosswise they must have split up instantly, but the method in which they were put together held them for one precious moment while the men each clutched one of the girls and leaped for the nearest rock.

By rare good luck they kept their feet, and reached a great flat mass which, judged by appearances, had only recently fallen.

Further advance or retreat was alike impossible. On three sides roared the cheated torrent; behind and above, canopy-wise, towered the cliff. If the evidence of ominous fissures and lateral cracks were to be read aright, there was no telling the moment when they might be buried under another avalanche of thousands of tons of stone.

Every tide deepened the sap. They were imprisoned in one of nature’s own quarries, where work was relentless and unceasing.

Once again idle chance had decided that Maseden should save Nina and Sturgess Madge. Not that it mattered a jot. If ever four people were in hapless case, it was they. For a time even to Maseden, who had never lost faith in his star, it seemed that the best fortune that could now befall would be for the trembling rock overhead to crash down on them.

The din was terrific, and the water level was rising so rapidly that five minutes after they had gained their present position the boulders to which they had sprung from the sundering platform of logs were a foot deep in the swirling current. Each of the girls, wholly unconscious of her attitude, clung despairingly to the man at her side and watched the climbing surge with somber eyes.

They were too stunned to yield to fear, and the life of the past fortnight had so steeled their nerves and strengthened their bodies that fainting was no longer the readiest means of obtaining a merciful respite from present horrors. Rather did a bitter rage possess them, for it was a harsh and monstrous decree of fate which had not only robbed them of a hard-won means of escape, but immersed them in a veritable condemned cell.

Maseden, like the others, was watching the encroaching water-line in a benumbed way when he became aware that Nina was speaking. He looked into her drawn face and tried to smile, though a sort of mist clouded his eyes.

“What is it, girlie?” he said, putting his mouth close to her ear and addressing her as though she were a timid child.

“Is this the end?” she cried, imitating him.

“Not yet, anyhow,” and he gave her a reassuring hug.

“Tell me – if you think – we have only a few more minutes,” she said.

He read nothing into the request save a natural desire that she should be prepared for the worst and try to cross the Great Divide with a prayer on her lips. The pitiful words helped to dispel the cloud which had befogged his wits, and he began to weigh the pros and cons of the forlornest of forlorn hopes.

The water was lapping their feet. The rock arched outward over their heads. Between the spot where they stood and the actual wall of rock there was already a flowing stream.

He looked at his watch. The hour was seven o’clock, and he estimated the time of high-water at about half-past seven. Then, as when he was lying along the foremast of the Southern Cross amid the thunders of the reef, a tiny seed of hope sprang into life in his brain. If they could outlast the tide there was still a chance!

The very fact that this chaos of fallen cliff created a fearsome rapid in the tide-way showed that the passage must be fairly open during low water. If promptness in decision could enable a man to conquer a difficulty, Maseden was certainly not lacking in that attitude.

“Come!” he said. “Not for the first time, we must put our backs to the wall. We may find a good grip for our feet before the water mounts too high. The four of us must lace arms and cling together. I believe the tide will not rise above our knees. At any rate, we cannot be swept away easily. It is worth trying.”

She nodded. Turning to her sister, she explained Maseden’s scheme. Soon they were braced against the rock and facing valiantly their new ordeal.

In the Middle Ages, when a lust for inflicting torture infected some men like a cancerous growth, a favorite method of at once punishing and destroying an unfortunate enemy was to chain him in a dungeon to which a tidal river had access, and leave him there until the slow-rising flood drowned him.

They were in some such plight, self-chained to a rock, though not knowing when a sudden swirl of water might sweep them to speedy death.

CHAPTER XIV

THE TURN OF THE TIDE

The change, when it came, came swiftly. It was as though the All-Powerful bade the waters cease their snarling and stilled the fury of the reef. During nearly an hour the sea lapped the very thighs of the four castaways, but the roar of battle between rocks and current had died down and it was possible to hear the spoken word.

Sturgess was the first to break the spell cast on the whole party by the seeming imminence of death.

“If ever I set foot in New York again I’ll be good and go to church Sundays,” he said. “This is Sunday, February 6, an’ I guess I’ve been as near Kingdom Come to-day as I’m likely to get on a round trip ticket.”

For a little while no one passed any comment. Sunday! The mere name of the day had a bizarre sound. What had God-given Sunday and its peaceful associations to do with this grim and savage wilderness?

Suddenly Nina Forbes began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. One by one the others joined in. The concluding petition had a peculiar appropriateness. If ever four Christian people might appeal to be delivered from evil, surely these four were in great need of heavenly succor.

“That’s fine!” said Sturgess, almost cheerfully, when a hearty “Amen” had relieved their surcharged feelings. “Me for the pine pew and the right sort of preacher when next I stroll out of West Fifty-seventh Street into Broadway of a Sabbath morning. Anyhow, to-day being Sunday, and the hour rather early, which way do we head for the nearest church when the tide falls, commodore?”

Maseden had already weighed that very question, but the utter collapse of the voyage on which he had founded such high hopes had chastened his pride.

“I think we had better put it to the vote,” he said. “I’ve led you into such a death-trap already that I don’t feel equal to a decision.”

He had been watching a big rock on the opposite shore. A little while ago it was awash; now it was submerged, yet the water was appreciably lower where they were standing.

The seeming contradiction was puzzling. He had yet to learn that the laws governing water in motion are extraordinarily complex – take to witness the varying levels of the whirlpool in the Niagara River and the almost phenomenal height of the central stream in the Niagara rapids.