He watched her turn and enter her room; saw that she had closed her
door-something she had not dared do heretofore; then he went into
his own room and threw himself down on the bunk, shaking in every
nerve.
For a long while, preoccupied with the obsession for
self-destruction, he lay there face downward, exhausted, trying to
fight off the swimming sense of horror that was creeping over him
again..... Little by little it mounted like a tide from hell.... He
struggled to his feet with the unuttered cry of a dreamer tearing
his throat. An odd sense of fear seized him and he dressed and
adjusted his clumsy life-suit. For the ship was in the danger zone,
now, and orders had been given, and dawn was not far off. Perhaps it
was already day! he could not tell in his dim cabin.
And after he was completely accoutred for the hazard of the
Hun-cursed seas he turned and looked down at his bunk with the odd
idea that his body still lay there--that it was a thing apart from
himself--something inert, unyielding, corpse-like, sprawling there
in a stupor--something visible, tangible, taking actual proportion
and shape there under his very eyes.
He turned his back with a shudder and went on deck. To his surprise
the blue lights were extinguished, and corridor and saloon were all
rosy with early sunlight.
Blue sky, blue sea, silver spindrift flying and clouds of silvery
gulls--a glimmer of Heaven from the depths of the pit--a glimpse of
life through a crack in the casket--and land close on the starboard
bow! Sheer cliffs, with the bonny green grass atop all furrowed by
the wind--and the yellow-flowered broom and the shimmering whinns
blowing.
"Why, it's Scotland," he said aloud, "it's Glenark Cliffs and the
Head of Strathlone--my people's fine place in the Old World--where
we took root--and--O my God! Yankee that I am, it looks like home!"
The cape of a white fleece cloak fluttered in his face, and he
turned and saw Miss Erith at his elbow.
Yellow-haired, a slender, charming thing in her white wind-blown
coat, she stood leaning on the spray-wet rail close to his shoulder.
And with him it was suddenly as though he had known her for
years--as though he had always been aware of her beauty and her
loveliness--as though his eyes had always framed her--his heart had
always wished for her, and she had always been the sole and
exquisite tenant of his mind.
"I had no idea that we were off Scotland," he said--"off Strathlone
Head--and so close in. Why, I can see the cliff-flowers!"
She laid one hand lightly on his arm, listening; high and heavenly
sweet above the rushing noises of the sea they heard the singing of
shoreward sky-larks above the grey cliff of Glenark.
He began to tremble. "That nightmare through which I've struggled,"
he began, but she interrupted:
"It is quite ended, Kay. You are awake. It is day and the world's
before you." At that he caught her slim hand in both of his:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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