Conversation -- Fiction; Entertaining -- Fiction; Hospitality -- Fiction; New England -- Fiction
An hour or more later, roused once again to a still somewhat dazed
but now unalterable conviction that Allan John had whistled, and
fully equipped this time to combat whatever opposition or weather
she might meet, she crept from the house out into the storm with
the little Pom dog sniffing at her heels. Just what happened
afterwards nobody knows. Just how it happened or exactly when it
happened, nobody can even guess. Maybe it was the brilliantly
lighted bungalow my Husband had fixed for the setting of the "Bunga
low Scene" just after Ann Woltor's surreptitious visit that incited
her. Maybe to a mind already stricken with feverishness the rising
tide did suck through the bungalow rocks with a sound that faintly
suggested a rather specially agonized sort of whistle. Who can say?
The fact remains that to all intents and purposes she seemed to
have ignored the ledge that even yet, in spite of its drenching
spray, would have been perfectly safe for another half hour at
least, and plunged forth down the blind trail, off the rocks into
the water below. Resolutely she refused to cry for help. Perhaps
the shock of the cold water chilled the cry in her throat. She
grasped the slippery seaweed clinging to the rocks--moaning a
little--crying a little--the pitiful struggle setting the Pom dog
nearly crazy. How long she clung there she couldn't tell. She was
mauled and bruised by the threshing waves. Still some complex
inhibition prevented her crying out for help. Ages passed, her
bruised arms and numb fingers refused to hold the grip on the
elusive seaweed forever and she eventually let go her hold. A
receding wave took her and tossed her poor exhausted body still
struggling against another ledge of rock well out of reach from
shore. Then, for the first time, the May Girl seemed to realize
fully her peril--and she shrieked for help.
Ann Woltor, rousing sluggishly from her sleep, heard the black Pom
dog barking furiously on the beach. Reluctant at first to leave her
snug bed it must have been several minutes at least before sheer
curiosity and irritation drove her to get up and peer from the
window.
Out of that murky blackness of course not a single outline of the
little dog met her sight. Just that incessant yap-yap-yap-yap of a
tiny creature almost frenzied with excitement. But what really
smote Ann Woltor's startled vision, and for the first time, was the
flare of lights, which made the bungalow seem as if ablaze. And as
she stared aghast into that flare of light which seemed to point so
accusingly at her across the intervening waters, she either sensed
or saw the May Girl's unmistakable head and shoulders banging into
the single craggy rock that still jutted up from the depths saw an
arm reach out heard that one blood-curdling scream!
Rollins must have thought she was mad! Dragging him from his bed,
with her arms around his neck, her lips crushed to his ear,--even
then she could hardly articulate or make a sound louder than a
whisper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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