She ran on through the pine wood up the path beyond. Mrs. Cornell met
her, tried to speak with chattering teeth, but ended in a scream and
fell upon her shoulder. Over her head Anne saw Bassett flying down the
slope to the wharf. Then presently boats moving out from Hayworth. They
came with incredible speed, sliding forward in a group that spread and
broke into units scattering across the channel. Here they sped back and
forth, up and down, swift black shapes that seemed to be executing some
complicated maneuvers along the glittering track of moonlight. She was
aware of Bassett’s figure leaving the wharf and racing to the house, of
Shine thudding by and calling:
“They’re here already! I got some one on the wire and I told him to go
like hell.”
Miss Pinkney’s voice answered him from the edge of the Point where she
stood like a black basalt statue:
“Oh, they’re here, all right. Every feller that has a boat’s out. But
it’s no use; no one who’s ever got caught in _that_ current’s been
found.”
Shine muttered an invocation and came to a stop. They all stood
speechless staring at the boats--the boats looking for Sybil who half
an hour ago was alive like themselves and now was--where?
As soon as he saw the fleet in operation, Bassett ran to the house. He
had to find Flora and get fuller information from her before he called
up the police, and not seeing her outside, he supposed she was still
there. The great room was almost dark. He felt for one of the standard
lamps and pulled the string. The gush of light fell directly over her,
close to him, sunk in an armchair, as still as if she, too, had ceased
to live. He had expected difficulties in getting a coherent statement
from her, but she told him what she had seen, briefly and clearly, as
if she had known he was coming and was ready for him.
She had skirted the island and come to that part of the path which
faced the Point. A hollow intervened, extending to the water’s edge
in a mass of shelving rock. Across this hollow she saw Sybil appear
on the end of the Point, coming up from the opposite side, and almost
immediately heard the shot. Sybil had thrown up her arms, staggered
forward and gone over the bluff. It all happened in a flash and Flora,
though describing herself as dazed, had run down the path into the
hollow and out on the rocks thinking she could catch her. But she saw
the body go swirling by--far out of her reach, caught and borne along
in the current. She had watched it, stunned, then had come to her
senses and staggered back to the shore--she thought she had fallen more
than once--and ran to the house. On the way there she had seen no one
and heard nothing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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