The Island of Appledore/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
MIST AND MOONLIGHT
The two stood looking at each other for a full minute, both as still as mice.
“Did you hear it?” Sally asked at last in a startled whisper, and, “I did, didn’t you?” Billy returned.
They listened and listened but there was no repetition of the sound upstairs. It might have been a mistake, it might have been—oh, anything. The silence was so complete that Billy could hear the blood throbbing in his ears and the faint squeak of a board under Sally’s foot as she shifted her position. A little bright-eyed mouse peeped out of a corner and, deceived by the quiet, thought the way was safe for an excursion across the wide, dusty floor. It was quite in the centre of the room before it discovered that it was in the dreaded presence of human beings, turned, and went scampering back to its hole again. Quite in accord with her usual calm, Sally stared after it and minded its presence not at all. In fact she drew a comforting explanation from the intrusion.
“I believe it was just rats or mice upstairs,” she said; “the noise they make often does sound like people moving about. I don’t really believe it was anything at all.”
Billy looked up at the long flight of rickety stairs that led from the room they were in to the closed door on the floor above. Could any one be up there, was it that door that had moved a little on its rusty hinges, was some one peering at them even now? He could not be sure and, if the truth be told, he had no very great desire to go up and find out. He thought, after all, that Sally’s explanation was the most comfortable one to believe.
There was not very much chance to think further of the matter just then for Captain Saulsby began to occupy all their attention. He roused himself from the strange stupor into which he had fallen, and seemed for a time to be really better. Sally even persuaded him to drink some of the broth that she had brought with her, and had heated before the fire. After he had swallowed it down, with some reluctance and by dint of much persuading, the old sailor sat up and seemed lively and talkative and almost himself again.
The two did not tell him of the sound they had heard upstairs, but let him talk of their adventure in the cat-boat, of the destroyer, of the ungrateful behaviour of the runaway Josephine. Occasionally his thoughts would wander a little and he would begin telling of some adventure long past; he went back more than once to the night when he had fallen asleep on watch and thought that he had seen a ship. He would bring himself back with a jerk and look at them wonderingly as though he did not quite understand, himself, how his ideas had become confused. Sally made him comfortable by moving the bench into a corner by the fire, whose warmth felt pleasant enough, even to the children, since the air in the old, closed-up mill seemed to grow even more damp and chilly as the night advanced. Billy pulled out the broken arm-chair for Sally, and she sat down in it gratefully, for she was weary with much trotting back and forth. She answered Captain Saulsby now and again when he paused in his rambling talk, but finally began to speak only at longer and longer intervals. Billy sat opposite on the uncomfortable stool; he propped his head against the chimney piece for a little rest; he did not feel sleepy, but he too was very tired. He watched Sally’s yellow head nod once or twice, he saw her eyelids grow heavier and heavier until at last they closed. She leaned sideways against the arm of the chair, heaved a long drowsy sigh and fell fast asleep.
Captain Saulsby did not seem in the least sleepy, but talked on and on, the thread of his conversation becoming ever more difficult to follow. His mind had dropped away entirely into the past; he talked of Singapore now, and of hot still nights on the Indian ocean, or of the restless, choppy tossing of the China Sea. Billy’s own thoughts wandered farther and farther away, pondering on questions of his own, the sound of the Captain’s voice becoming vague in his ears. He wondered dimly why the bluejackets had not come back; perhaps they had been picked up at the other landing place and had returned to the ship. He had assured them so earnestly that he could get assistance at Sally’s house that probably they had not thought of him again. When he found that the Shutes were away maybe he ought to have gone off at once by the road to get help. But no, that would have left Sally there alone for too long; it would not have been safe, especially with that possibility of something or somebody upstairs. Why, oh, why, had he slept through the ebb tide? That was what had caused all the trouble. His mind drifted further, to his mother and father in South America, and how much he would have to tell them when they got home. It would be more interesting to relate his tale to them than to Aunt Mattie, although she was proving to be rather a good sort, too. He liked Aunt Mattie; he would not have called her “an old-maid aunt” again for anything. How lucky it was she had gone to Boston and was not aware of any of his adventures. He watched the faint moonlight move across the floor, disappear and come into view again; he thought of Johann Happs and his broken clock, and wondered again about the man who had frightened him so. Dear, dear, but this was a long night; would it ever end? He rose at last, walked stiffly over to mend the dying fire and then, going to the door, stood for a little peering out.
A heavy fog was rolling in from the sea, but it seemed to cling to the ground and not to be able to rise very high. The trees and bushes stood knee deep in the thick white mist, with the moonlight still turning the topmost branches to silver. He felt sure that some hours must have gone by, that it must be after midnight, perhaps nearly morning. A light touch on his arm told him that Sally was awake and had come to stand beside him.
“I am so stiff,” he whispered softly, “that I will have to go out and walk up and down a little or I will never be able to move again.”
Sally nodded.
“It will do you good,” she answered, also in a whisper, “and the Captain is quiet now.”
Billy glanced toward the old sailor and somehow felt more alarmed about him than ever before. He was silent, but not asleep; his eyes were half-closed and he seemed quite unconscious of their presence. His breathing had grown weak and uneven. Sally went over to him; if she felt the same anxiety that Billy did, she managed not to show it.
“Go on,” she ordered, under her breath; “it will be good for you.”
He wondered if perhaps the tide were not down now and the water shallow enough for him to cross the stepping stones. Once beyond the mill creek he could get help so quickly that perhaps his two companions might not even know that he had gone.
To spend such a night as he had, to follow it by sleeping all afternoon on a bare floor, and then sit up on a three-legged stool for half the next night, seemed to make one feel a little queer. He tramped down the path briskly to get the stiffness out of his legs, then turned to look back at the mill to make sure Sally was safe. There was a feeble, flickering light in the lower windows, that was from their fire, and the candle that burned on the mantel shelf. But—
“Is that moonlight?” wondered Billy, as he caught a faint glimmer from one of the panes in a window above.
It might have been moonlight reflected on the glass but he could not be sure. He went back to make certain but could not for the life of him decide. There were outside stairs, so steep as to be practically a ladder, that went up to the top of the mill. The steps led very close past the window at which he was looking and at which he continued to stare for some minutes while he made up his mind to something.
“After all,” he concluded at last, almost speaking his thought aloud, “there is not the least harm in going up to see.”
He stepped upon the stairs as quietly as a cat, so that Sally and the Captain need not be disturbed. The main door to the mill faced the sea, and this he had left open. The steps slanted across the wide, blank wall and passed close below the largest window that also gave upon the sea. As Billy climbed higher and higher he realized what a good lookout the place would make.
The stairs outside were even more unsteady and decayed than was the staircase within, yet they held under his weight. Billy trod gingerly but progressed steadily upward in as complete silence as he could manage. Once or twice a rotten board creaked under his foot, but only faintly. He came nearer and nearer to the window and finally laid his hand upon the sill. He discovered that the sash was pushed half way up and propped with a stick. There was not the slightest glimmer of light inside.
“Now,” he thought, “if the window was up, could the glass above have reflected the moonlight?”
It was a difficult problem to decide, but at last he made up his mind that it could. He listened a long, long time but he did not hear a sound within, not a rustle, not a breath. It was so dark that even after his eyes got used to the blackness, and after he had lifted himself up to peer boldly over the sill, he could spy nothing but vague bulky shapes like boxes or furniture.
“There is surely no one there,” he decided; “there isn’t a person in the world who knows how to keep so still as that. There hasn’t been any one there for twenty years.”
He let himself down from the sill with far less care than he had exercised in pulling himself up. One of his hands slipped a little, and he shifted it quickly along the ledge to get a better hold. As he did so his fingers touched something that lay upon the sill; it dropped, struck one of the steps below him and bounded to one side, then fell with a thud upon the grass beneath. He ran down the ladder quickly and felt about on the ground until he found it. A pair of field glasses it proved to be, quite undoubtedly the same ones that he had picked up once before upon the rocks by the willow-trees.
“No one there for twenty years?” he repeated to himself. His fingers, slipping over the cool metal and the leather covering, assured him that the glasses were not even dusty.
He had to sit down upon the grass, in order to reflect upon this problem long and earnestly.
“There has been some one there lately,” he thought, “but there can’t be any one now; there can't. Nothing alive could possibly keep so quiet; why, I could have heard even a mouse breathe.”
He was thoroughly convinced that his intent listening could not have played him false and that he must have been mistaken about seeing a light. His reassured thoughts, therefore, went back once more to Sally and Captain Saulsby. Suppose it was so near morning that the tide would be down again; suppose he ran across the causeway for help and got back within half-an-hour, long before Sally could get uneasy. That surely was the best thing to do. The truth was that the old sailor’s condition had filled him with real terror. The creaking upstairs, the field-glasses, the suspicion of a light, all these might puzzle him, but the state of the Captain made him actually afraid. He felt that whatever was to be done must be accomplished at once.
He ran down to the shore, along the rough, over-grown path. It was only a few yards to the beach, but a little longer around the shore to the stream and the place where the stepping stones crossed. He could see by the mist-obscured moonlight that the tide had come in and was going out again and that the water was still running over the causeway.
“It can’t be so very deep,” he thought, and taking off his coat and hanging his shoes about his neck, he waded cautiously into the stream. Up to his knees, his waist, his arms, it rose; one step more and it would be up to his neck.
“I will have to swim it,” he said to himself, and even at that moment he was swept off his feet and borne struggling into the deeper water. He had wondered a little earlier in the day why the bluejackets had not swum across instead of going around that long, hot way by the road. It came to him now in a sudden flash that seasoned sailors knew more about the tide currents than did boys, that he had done an inexcusably foolish thing. He swam with all his strength, wildly at first; he sank, came up, and struck out again. He was at first angry to find he had no hope of reaching the other shore; then his anger turned quickly to a single thought—could he possibly struggle back to land again? So weary was he with all he had recently been through, that he found suddenly his strength was going. He realized that the current, firmly and surely, was bearing him down to the mouth of the stream and carrying him out to sea, to be lost in the tossing waves and the blanket of heavy fog, yet he could make scarcely an effort to save himself.
He remembered suddenly that no one would have the faintest idea what had become of him, that Sally would search for him everywhere, would call and call in vain, for he would have apparently vanished from the face of the earth. She would be left alone there with a helpless delirious man, and with Heaven knew what lurking terrors in the dark old mill. The thought gave him strength to put every last atom of energy into one final endeavour and to struggle free of the current just as it was sweeping him past the last point of rocks. He felt the force of the tide abate a little, then he drifted into an eddy and came quietly to shore on a bit of gravel beach.
For a long time he lay panting and exhausted, making no effort to move. It seemed as though he would never get his lungs full of air again, so completely had he spent both his breath and his strength. At last he sat up, discovered to his surprise that he was still half in the water, crawled up the bank and began trying to wring out his dripping clothes.
“I don’t think there is much fun in adventures that you have all alone,” was the grave comment that he made to himself as he stumbled up the beach.
“Now, just what can I tell Sally?” he was thinking further when Sally’s own voice interrupted him. He heard her quick feet coming down the path and heard her voice, raised high in real terror, crying,
“Billy—Billy Wentworth!”
He ran up through the bushes and met her as she came flying toward him through the mist.
“Come quick,” she cried; “come quick. It’s Captain Saulsby. I—I, oh, Billy, I’m so frightened!”
Together they sped back up the path to the mill, tripping over roots, stumbling on the moss-covered stones, gasping in their terrified haste. As they came near Billy heard a strange sound, the Captain’s voice surely, but high and queer and cracked, shouting out what must have been meant for a song of the sea. He went up the steps in one breathless leap and came inside the mill.
Captain Saulsby was in the middle of the room, lurching and staggering as he tried to walk, waving his arms and shouting as loud as his broken old voice would let him. Billy ran to him and tried to lead him back to the bench, but was shaken off with a quite unexpected force.
“Let me go,” he cried; “don’t keep me back; they all want to keep me back. Do they think I’ll stay below when it’s my watch?”
He staggered a step forward, swayed and collapsed upon the floor in a heap.
Somehow they got him back upon the bench and Sally tucked him in with the blankets and pillows she had brought. Yet the moment his strength revived he was struggling to get up again, shouting and raging at them both. Billy held him down with all his strength but was scarcely able to keep him quiet. At last the old man’s excitement seemed to die down a little and he lay still, apparently quite exhausted. He kept repeating, however, what he had been shouting a moment before.
“It’s my watch,” he insisted over and over in a broken whisper. “Let me go, it’s my watch.”
He lay quiet finally, and Billy and Sally, both quite worn out, leaned limply against either side of the bench.
“Will this horrible night ever end?” thought Billy. “Is there anything left now that can still happen?”
It seemed almost in answer to his unspoken words that there came again a noise above them. It was no faint creaking this time, but the unmistakable sound of running feet, the banging of a door and the slam of a window thrown suddenly wide open. There was a loud shout in the wood outside to the right of them, it was answered immediately by a second, this time from the left, and there was a heavy rustling and crashing as of somebody running at headlong speed through the underbrush. There was a quick, breathless silence, then, above them, the sound of a sharp metallic click.
Sally got up, marched to the fireplace and took down the candle that burned on the mantel.
“I can’t stand it any longer,” she said firmly; “I’m going to see who’s up there.”
“No, no,” cried Billy, “you shan’t; you mustn’t. If you have to find out, I am the one to go.”
“You can’t go,” she returned briefly. “Captain Saulsby will lie still for you, but I can’t do anything with him. You can’t leave him.”
This was so true that Billy was forced to accept it. He did remove his arm for a minute, but the restless patient sat up at once and had to be forced down again among the pillows.
“You see,” said Sally, almost triumphantly, and went on toward the stairs.
“Sally, don’t,” gasped Billy again, but he pled in vain.
“I can’t stand it not to know,” was Sally’s only answer. When once she was set upon a thing it was quite impossible to turn her, a fact that had never been so well proved as now. She advanced to the stairs, leaving Billy in the dark, climbed to the first landing and turned back to smile at him. She was certainly not afraid; she was of an equal certainty rather pleased at his helplessness to stop her.
She turned at the landing to go up the next flight. There must have been a draught under the closed door at the top, for it made her candle wink and flicker, but she marched on undismayed. She looked a dauntless, little figure as she went up from step to step, the moving light shining on her thick, yellow braids and the crossed straps of her white apron, and making her fat little shadow dance behind her on the wall.