Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 34, Number 216, 12 June 1909 — Page 6

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IV Owen Oliver fllf

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HERE was a space of still water round the Uralian. One reef sheltered her as she lay upon another, straining and groaning, like a beast in pain. Her 'bows had climbed over the hidden rock, jjointing scornfully upwards till they had bent with their own -weight and sagged downward again. Now the vforecastle was half submerged, and the water poured ira and out through great rents. The vessel was twisted lamidships, the deck-planking had opened in places, andtpzrt of the music saloon had fallen in; but the stern wasauninjured and lay in deep water. They carried aft thenboats that were available and launched them there. Beyond the oasis of calm, auheavy sea swept shoreWards in towering green waves.auntil it reached a comb of jagged rocks, and poured through the openings in sheets of foam to a long, sandyflbeach. Three tossing boats were approaching the rocksas slowly as the current would suffer, looking for a passage through. The fourth the last remaining was just leaving the ship. : The men who had lowered it, with no appliances but bare ropes, rubbed their chafedhands on their trousers and mopped their foreheads, and gathered together silently except a tall gentleman of about forty. He left the rest and went toward a lady, who stood back a little, watching them. The rest of the women, and all the children, were in the boats. She turned when he reached her, and they walked forward together. He patted her shoulder approvingly, and she smiled faintly atihim. She was about five-and-thirty ; could scarcely be vcalled good-looking, but very likable when she smiled. " That's why she wouldn'rjgo in the boat ! " one of the gathering observed. ' "Aye!" said an old sailor. "She's the right sort" ; Then they were silent again. The man and the woman were silent too. When they reached the end of the saloon promenade, beside the wrecked music-saloon, they stopped and rested their arms on the rail and gazed at the shore a mile away ; not as if they wished to look at : the shore, but as if they feared to look at each other. The chief officer came swiftly down the narrow ladder from the navigation deck, with two life-belts on his arm. "Best put them on," he advised, "but I don't think they'll be much use." He nodded 'toward the breakers. "She'll go in ten minutes." The man laid one belt on the deck, while he put the Other round the woman. She held up her arms and Smiled at him all the time. When he finished his task, and picked up the other belt, she took it from him. "Let me do it for you," she offered. - "I should like to if I may." His grave face lit up for a moment. "I shall like you to," he told her. "You are a brave woman." "Braver than I thought," she assented. "I used to think that I was just ordinary; that we all were. Now I think if was life that was ordinary, not we. What shall we do with the rest of it the ten minutes? " "Let us open our hearts," the man proposed. "We may venture now. Dear lady, I have admired you and liked you all the voyage. We shall go as friends together, I think ? " , "I wish no better company," she told him. " Is there no one who has a better right? " he asked. "No one. And you?" ' " No one." "And that," she said, "is why we thought life ordinary, I suppose." He nodded and they rested their arms on the rail again and gazed at the boats approaching the shore. There were only two now no, three. One lay upturned on the beach. Specks of humanity crawled out of the foam. Some rushed back, at the risk of their lives, and pulled out others. "Yes," he said. "We are braver than we thought. Do you see the bounder man, as we called him ? " He pointed to the group at the stern. "One might have expected him to fight for a place in the boats. When I saw htm carry the first child down, I thought it was an excuse to get a place for himself; but he carried half a dozen more down and came back cheerfully every time. He managed to cheer them, too; wiped their eyes and joked at their fears in his boorish way ; got some packets of sweets from the bar and threw them down to the boat, and kissed his hand to them. Now he's lighting' a cigarette. Yes, we're braver than we thought. yo,.dear lady, are the bravest and the best. You gave up your life when you gave up your place in the boat. Why?" ! "The children have no mother," she explained; "and he is such a good father to them. They need him; and I have no one." He took her hand. "You have a friend," he assured her. "Yes," she said, simply. "That was the other reason why I remained." " Me? " He looked at her Quickly. " You. I wonder it doesn't matter what we say now, does it? I wonder if we really cared for each other! " " Ah ! " said the man. " I wondered too, but I thought women -always knew?" . She shook her head. "I liked you. certainly; but I have liked other men. I never liked any of them enough. You see, I am not a marrying woman. I have I had aims in life. Marriage meant sacrificing so much. It & a sacrifice for an independent wotnatH-to give up your individuality; to be ; Mrs. Something-Else ; not even your own. name left ! And for what? To be a toy and a plaything for a year. Perhaps not a year don't call it selfishness. I'd have given up everything if I had thought that love would last! My dear friend, it doesn't last. You and I are not children. We have seen life. We know! But the ' woman's lasts longest. I was afraid of that!" "I know." The man nodded. " I liked you, too; liked you more' than was comfortable ! I thought it out many : a time. It was more than liking, Marian. I quickened at jour coming; warmed at your beautiful smile." ; "Dear friend," she protested, "we can be candid now. You know that I am not beautiful." . "Indeed." he declared, "I thought you were. It was

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yourself that I liked; but I liked your woman's graces, too. You are smiling very beautifully now." " If it pleases you," she said, " I will smile to the end. I am glad that my looks please you. Will it make this this moment of your life happier to know that I admire you? I do." He nodded. - "Thank you, dear woman. I was very tempted sometimes to ask you to give me yourself; but you see, I, also, have liked others ; and not enough. I, too, was not sure if I liked you enough ; but I liked you more than any of the rest much more. Sometimes I pictured you at my breakfast-table, in a cool morning-gown, your white fingers busy with the cups. But I was forty and more ; and you were forty and less. The married breakfast-table is not always harmonious ; and we were a little old to adjust ourselves to double harness; and so well, I didn't think so much of the risk of quarrels. We might have had a few hot words, now and then but they don't matter. It was the cold words that I feared. To love you and I knew that I should love you very

AMD OAIID AT THt SMOKE AS W THKY FKARKD TO LOOK AT EACH OTHIR. much and then to slip back! To be loved by you if you could and then to be loved by you no longer! To turn into the ordinary married pair; to live our separate lives and a chain between ! " They gazed out over the water again. Another boat dashed safely ashore. They fancied that they heard a shout from the beach. "He and his children are in that," the man said. "You would have been saved. Oh! you brave, good woman ! You were worth taking the risk for." "But you. did not mean to take it." She brushed her eyes. :. , "I told myself so; but I used to fancy that some night when the moon shone some night when the end of the voyage and the parting from you were nearer than I could bear and you looked at me with your beautiful smile I could never reason with that smile of yours, Marian." She turned to him, and smiled ; and he took both her hands and kissed them. "I did not mean to, either," she confessed ; " but I thought that perhaps near the end of the voyage, as you say if you took my hand I could never reason with the touch of your hand on mine. I oh, yes! I should have taken the risk, I think, if you had asked me." . .

He drew her gently to him. She laid her face on his shoulder for a moment, then lifted it to his. " Oh, my dear ! " she cried, " the risk was not that we should not love ; only that we should lose sight of it, in the commonplace of life. Now, if we are spared, we shall know " "We shall know, darling. There is no hope, I think. May we both be saved, or neither !";' "Yes yes hold me very tightly when then! . Oh! I love you so ! " x He took up a piece of cord that lay upon the deck and made a fastening between the life-belts. "If my arms can no longer hold you," he said, "we will still be together. It shall be both, or neither. I think it will be ' neither.' I love you very much, Marian." He kissed her many times, and she smiled the beautiful smile. " Close your eyes, then," she told him. " Think of me like this ; as you like to see me. Think that afterwards you will find me so. Dear, I was not always sure that I believed in afterwards; but now that you love me I am

sure. 'Love holds the keys of Heaven.' I wrote that once in a book a book! Now you have written it on my life. This is the time that T have lived, these few minutes ! " " My dear ! My dear! It is so hard! " " No, no ! We have found each other ; and perhaps if we had lived the ordinary life we never should have. This is best" They clung to each other tightly. They did not stir even when the ship gave a long shiver and another. Then the chief officer hurried forward. "Get aft," he cried. "Get aft! There's a lot of powder in the hold. .The captain's going to fire it and try to blow her up. It will break her in two; but he thinks that the stem will float off; and if the watertight compartments hold, we shall reach the breakers before we ground. He laughed in the careless way of sailormen. "I'll come to your wedding yet," he said. "God bless you!" She clasped her hands over his arm. "Oh!" she cried, "if this is the end, it was worth living for! Life is better than I thought, and braver. They have all been so brave. I will never despise any one again ! Not even a bounder man ! " The bounder man held out his hand to them when they reached him. COPYRIGHT, 19.

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"Good sports ! " he said, smiling at their locked fingers. An hour ago they would have thought him a vulgar intruder. Now they shock his hand warmly. Presently the chief officer appeared, almost dragging the old captain with him. The latter seemed to have no eyes for anything but the doomed ship. It was like a child to him, and he had no other. Ah! we all have dear ships that go down! The vessel shivered again, and heeled over slightly. They looked anxiously at one another, thinking that she would sink before the powder exploded, and then, suddenly, there was a great crash. Boards, bales, the whole music-saloon, flew into the air. The bows seemed to dissolve, and the stern took a great lurch into the water. ' The waves swept over it for a few moments, but when they passed it floated upright, and its human freight was left, clinging to the rails except the captain. The chief officer rubbed his drenched sleeve across his wet face. " He'd have wished to go with her," he said, huskily. "Yes," said the bounder man. "Yes. I can under-

stand that." And they did not think it strange that he should understand. The fragment of the ship swept unsteadily toward the shore, rocking and rolling so violently that those on it could scarcely cling to the rails. First they hung over the water; then they faced the sky a clear, blue sky, with a white cloud here and there. At every roll they sank lower in the water. " The compartments have broken in." the chief officer pronounced. '" She's filling." " Still we get a run for our money, the bounder man consoled him. As the stump of ship filled and sank farther, it rolled less, and they came into a current which carried them straight toward the shore, nearer and nearer, till they could distinguish each of the jagged teeth of rock sticking up through the seething foam and others underneath them. . The water reached the deck and began to wet their feet. They were fifty yards from the rocks where the sea brok. and perhaps a hundred and fifty from the shore. "I suppose we may as well jump over and take our luck, the bounder man suggested ; " but it's ten to one on those rocks. Hanged if it isnl!" They stared at the black masses jotting np between 99

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the green sea and the seething foam that raced to the' shore. r " They're awkward ! " the mate admitted. "Csf (funded ly awkward. If we could get through tktm Td bet ten to one on the lot of us reaching the shore alive. You can't drown in half a minute. Well, stum of us will get through. It's the only chance. Take a long breath before you start 4 " Cant you get a rope ashore? was asked, "the-way they do at wrecks so that we could go down it? " Ye-es," said the chief officer. " I might getia top ashore, but you couldn't hold on. I've no eradicate ran up and down it. No. You'll have to jump.! :

i.idi is me uiuy uiiiiK cu io qu nmu nrwur I man ant! tV wnmin lrwiirV .rk mKm N ".We will," he said, and she nodded approval. ' ; " You'd better go singly." an old sailor advised. " There'll be more chance of slipping between the snags, you see. If you're tied together and one gets caught -youH both be done for." The bounder man slapped him on the shoulder. " And suppose that's what they wish?" he aid. " Eh, my old sport?" . . . . v "Ah-h!" said the old sailor. "Ah-h! That makes it all the more pity. He looked at the cord which fastened them together, and suddenly he-laughed excitedly -and turned to the chief officer. " The very idea, sir I " he said. " If yon got a cable ashore, we'd sling 'em over it in pairs let the rope between 'em slide down it, don't you see? They could hold on to each other, and keep it from slipping off." The chief officer and several of the men rushed away and came back with twine and ropes. They fastened some balls of twine together and bound one end round a plank. Then they threw the plank overboard, and the current carried it swiftly toward the rocks. It struck one of the snags and leapt violently into the air. - Then it went on the beach, and one of the sailors secured H, and waved his arm. "Ah!" said the old sailor, "that's BflL H understands. He was a life-boat man once. Bill was. Look! He's telling the rest-" . He waved his arm in reply, and fastened on a thin rope and the men dragged it ashore by the twine, and then, by the line, they pulled in a stout hawser several hawsers joined, really. All ashore, even the women and children, assisted to haul, standing in a long row. Then the men held the end, and the women and children held the line attached to it Those aboard secured their end firmly , to the ship, carrying it up to the stanchions of the platform round the captain's cabin to give it as much elevation as possible; and then their comrades ashore pulled it as taut as they could tugging so hard that the poop of the ship moved yards nearer the breakers. The sailors substituted a stouter rope for the cord between the man and the woman, tied a loop in the end of the rope and greased it to make it run more easily. They put H over the hawser first, so that one would hang at each aide, and tolv. them to hold each other firmly. Then two or three men held them over the side ready to start. ' "Now," asked the chief officer, "are you ready?" "Wish each other luck," said the bounder man. "Don't mind us! The woman smiled at him, bravely. " God bless you alL" she said. " There are more good people in the world than I thought. Good-by." She lifted her face to the man, and they kissed each other. "God bless you! he said. "Go!" cried the chief officer, giving them a unghty push, and they slid swiftly down the sagging hawser, through the drenching foam that sprang up from the rocks and nearly took their breath away, holding each other more and more tightly, and rocking swiftly from y . side to side. At first they went very fast; but as the rope sagged their motion was slower and slower; 'and though the rope between them passed over the joins in the hawsers, . the obstacles checked their speed. Then their feet dragged in the foam and they moved very, very slowly, . till at last the current began dragging at their feet, and the oldest sailor ashore yelled out sharply; "Lower 'em! Lower 'em J The current H fetch -em!" And suddenly they splashed in the water and the foam flew all over them ; and a sailor, waist-deep in the water and holding to others in a chain, seized them and dragged them on to the beach. And, without waiting to -be untied, they joined the rest in hauling at the rope for the passage of the next pair, who were already at the ship's side; but as they pulled they kept smiling at each other. - ' "Oh!" she whispered once "And we thought hfa ordinary! All their friends were ashore at last. The chief oficer aad the " bounder man " were the final pair, and arrived a couple of minutes before the remains of the old ship broke up and disappeared. They were heavy men and swung their legs and landed unaided with a run; and then a sailor cut the couples adrift When he severed . the only lady from her companion he grinned. " The next time you're tied up." he prophesied, " nTI be a knot that can't be cut a parson's knot" And the bounder man beamed on them benevolently m he felt as though he would like to lend some one a dollar, he said. " I'll go and see it done," he asserted, "whether Fa asked or not" Three weeks later, when a passing steamer had ried them off to England, he was asked, and went ' H gave the bride a wonderful gold ornament fashioned like a fragment of rope tied in a sailor-like way. "The parson's knot, he informed them, and the chief officer, who was also asked to the wedding, took it up and smiled. "We don't cafl it that,-be sakL "We call iti'l lover's knot .. "That" said the bounder man. with a ' "is what it will be!"

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