My friend the murderer, and other mysteries and adventuresDoyle, Arthur Conan
General
My friend the murderer, and other mysteries and adventures
Doyle, Arthur Conan
Detective and mystery stories, English
That night a great wind rose up from the sea, and the wild waves
shrieked upon the shore as though they would tear it back with them
into the ocean. The turmoil and the uproar were congenial to my vexed
spirit. All night I wandered up and down, wet with spray and rain,
watching the gleam of the white breakers, and listening to the outcry
of the storm. My heart was bitter against the Russian. I joined my
feeble pipe to the screaming of the gale. “If he would but come back
again!” I cried, with clenched hands; “if he would but come back!”
He came back. When the gray light of morning spread over the eastern
sky and lit up the great waste of yellow, tossing waters, with the
brown clouds drifting swiftly over them, then I saw him once again.
A few hundred yards off along the sand there lay a long dark object,
cast up by the fury of the waves. It was my boat, much shattered
and splintered. A little farther on a vague, shapeless something
was washing to and fro in the shallow water, all mixed with shingle
and with sea-weed. I saw at a glance that it was the Russian, face
downward and dead. I rushed into the water and dragged him up on to
the beach. It was only when I turned him over that I discovered that
she was beneath him, his dead arms encircling her, his mangled body
still intervening between her and the fury of the storm. It seemed
that the fierce German Sea might beat the life from him, but with all
its strength it was unable to tear this one-idea’d man from the woman
whom he loved. There were signs which led me to believe that during
that awful night the woman’s fickle mind had come at last to learn the
worth of the true heart and strong arm which struggled for her and
guarded her so tenderly. Why else should her little head be nestling
so lovingly on his broad breast, while her yellow hair entwined itself
with his flowing beard? Why, too, should there be that bright smile of
ineffable happiness and triumph, which death itself had not had power
to banish from his dusky face? I fancy that death had been brighter to
him than life had ever been.
Madge and I buried them there on the shores of the desolate northern
sea. They lie in one grave deep down beneath the yellow sand. Strange
things may happen in the world around them. Empires may rise and may
fall, dynasties may perish, great wars may come and go, but, heedless
of it all, those two shall embrace each other forever and aye in their
lonely shrine by the side of the sounding ocean. I sometimes have
thought that their spirits flit like shadowy sea-mews over the wild
waters of the bay. No cross or symbol marks their resting-place, but
old Madge puts wild flowers upon it at times; and when I pass on my
daily walk and see the fresh blossoms scattered over the sand, I think
of the strange couple who came from afar and broke for a little space
the dull tenor of my sombre life.
THAT LITTLE SQUARE BOX.
“All aboard?” said the captain.
“All aboard, sir!” said the mate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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