CHAPTER XXVIII
THE TRANSPORT STEAMS ON
OUT of the darkness came Garth's voice, very anxious and tender.
"Have they hurt you, Joan?"
"No; oh, no!" she said. "Dearest, what have they done to you?"
"Nothing. They tied my hands rather tight, but that's all. What did they do to you?"
Joan gave a sigh of relief that it was no more.
"They tied me hand and foot, round and round, to those eye-bolts," she said.
"I suppose they only tied up my hands because they knew I couldn't walk," Garth said. "Oh, Joan! Think of that ship coming down now! Trusting the Light, and it isn't there."
"I know," said Joan dully.
The realization of it all began to dawn on Garth.
"All full of soldiers!" he said. "Oh, it would be awful enough, if it were just a poor schooner that trusted us. We'll have to do something."
"I know," Joan said again; "but we can't."
"What do you suppose they've done to Fogger and Mudder? Have they killed them, Joan?" His voice went up unsteadily at the end.
"No, no!" Joan cried. "They're just holding them somewhere, perhaps in a boat. I don't know. That—that creature said they were safe. But I don't know whether he told the truth," she murmured to herself.
It was still again. Joan felt that her head would burn up. Her hands and feet were cold, but her head throbbed and whirled.
Garth spoke again.
"If I came to you, do you think that I could untie you, Joan?"
"No," she said. "There are hundreds of knots, knotted and twisted and turned. No one could, especially in the dark. Besides, you couldn't come to me. And aren't your own hands tied?"
"Yes."
"Behind you, or in front of you?"
"Behind my back."
"You couldn't possibly untie me, belovéd."
The water outside sucked and gurgled with a cruel, hungry sound, and up above, the Light stood dead in the darkness.
"Is there a knife in your room, Joan?" Garth asked, "or scissors?"
"No," she said.
"There's none in Fogger and Mudder's room, either," he mused. "Only little sewing-scissors, in Mudder's work-basket; they wouldn't do. Is it a thick rope, Joan?"
"Quite thick. About as big as the stern-fast of the Ailouros."
"I know where there is a knife," he said; "the only one I'm sure about. The big boat jack-knife on the little shelf over the chest downstairs. It's always there beside the telescope."
"It doesn't do us very much good, though," she said, with a groan; "thinking of it won't help us."
"I'm going to get it," Garth said.
"You can't, darling; you mustn't think of trying. It's very brave of you."
There was a sudden sound, as Garth slid from the bed on to the floor.
"I'm going," he said.
"No!" Joan cried. "You sha'n't! I forbid you absolutely. Garth! Garth!"
"I don't see how you can stop me," he said, with what sounded almost like a laugh.
"But you can't!" Joan protested. "You mustn't!"
"I can," he said. "If I sit on the floor, I can get my hands out behind me and wiggle backwards, rather like a crab or an inch-worm. I'm doing it now, only I wish I knew where the door was. Oh, Joan, I'm awfully glad you said that, so that they didn't tie me all up."
"I didn't know when I said it that this was what you'd do," she groaned. "Ah, please!"
"That ship—coming along—this minute—in the dark—thinking the Light's there," he said in a queer, flat voice. "Don't keep making it worse, Joan." His voice came from the door now.
Joan's head sank on her chest. She tried to think of nothing, but her mind flew from one dreadful conjecture to another. It seemed to her that it might have been all night that she stood there, numb and agonized. Sometimes she called to him, and always his voice came back very cheerfully. Then—a sudden crash and silence.
"Garth! Oh!" She struggled and wrenched wildly, but the rope only cut her arms and tightened. There was no sound but the almost unbearable beat of her own heart. Then—
"All right! I—have—it, Joan!"
Interminable ages. She struck her whirling head back against the wall, to feel some other sensation than numbness and horror. Why did not some one see that the Light had gone out and come to investigate? Then she remembered the bay, bare of ships just then, and Quimpaug, hidden behind the point. Why did not the Life Saving Station see? Why didn't the men come from there? Could it be possible that the patrol had not missed the Light? Was there nothing, nobody, who had seen it go out? Was no one to know it until that hurrying transport, with its freight of soldiers, lay splintered on the Reef? Though the stars were muffled, all was clear on the sea below. The ship, expecting every instant to pick up the Light, would almost certainly cut too close to the point. The German's odious words came back to her, "There is no Light; what happens, hein?"
"Where are you, Joan?" said Garth's voice. It seemed to come from miles away. "Say something, so that I can find you."
She roused with a start and called out to him, and presently his shoulder struck her knee. He leaned there for a few moments, catching his breath with a little jerk.
"Now I'll—have to—open it—first," he said.
There was another silence; then a little click.
"It's open. I'll have to get with my back to you, on account of my hands being behind me. Oh, I can't reach far enough!"
He caught her dress and pulled himself to his knees.
"Now try," she said, in a voice which did not seem to come from her own lips.
"I still can't reach your hands," he said. "My arms aren't put on right to work backward. If I can get all the way up, I can reach. May I pull hard? Am I hurting you?"
"No; go on."
She felt his hand take a new grip on her skirt, and then the tremendous effort of his pulling himself from his knees to his poor little unsteady feet.
"I'm horribly afraid of cutting you," he said. "I can reach now, but I can't tell just what I'm doing."
"Cut me, if you have to. Don't mind what you do," she said.
The knife was sawing at a turn of the rope with short, hampered strokes. She could hear him whispering doggedly to himself:
"I can, I—can. I did it—as long as—this—at the—doctor's. I can do it."
The rope loosened a little in one place, and Joan twisted her hand.
"Don't," Garth said. "I'll cut you. You can't pull it out yet, till I do more. Don't jiggle your arm! If I fall down now, it'll take so much longer!"
She remained motionless, and at last something gave with a rush. She tore one arm free.
"Take the knife," Garth gasped. "Can you do the rest yourself? I—I'm afraid I—don't feel—quite—"
He went down suddenly in a limp little heap across her feet. She hacked and slashed at the ropes which bound her other arm and her ankles.
"Garth, Garth! Oh, my poor, splendid darling!"
The next moment she had him in her stiff arms and had cut his hands free. With rather uncertain steps she carried him across to his bed. Holding him very closely, she felt the struggle of his overtaxed heart hurrying against her own. As she stooped to pull the covers around him, he pushed her from him.
"Go!" he said. "I'm all right now. Go to the Light! Oh, run!"
She ran down the dark, steep stairs, through the lamp-room passage. There she stumbled over familiar rubber-boots; an oilskin coat swept her cheek and made her start violently. Up the iron steps of the tower, around and around, losing all sense of how far she had come, till she fell against the little ladder at the top.
In the lantern it was chokingly black, and from the darkness without came the steady throb and thrill of a screw. Joan groped frantically. The match spurted and flickered, then a calm, triumphant radiance filled the night. There was the grinding, hissing roar of a great engine backing full speed astern, a racing and thrashing of water. Joan clung dizzily to the rail of the gallery, looking down.
Out of the somber immensity of the night loomed the shape of a great steamship, backing desperately away from the ledges. It sheered off and swung close around the seaward corner of the lighthouse, so close that Joan saw dim white faces staring up at her blankly.
The transport swept on, and night closed in about the place where she had passed. But when the low beat of her engines had died, the waves of her wake still foamed and fretted against the foot of the tower. Joan went back into the lantern, because she was half afraid that she would fall from the balcony. She put out her hand to steady herself, and, in the light of the great lamp, saw that it was covered with blood. But though she searched rapidly, she found no cut or wound on her person which could account for it. With a little cry, "Oh, Garth!" she groped, stumbling, down the tower-stairs and back through the passage.
Feverishly, with clumsy fingers, Joan lit a lamp and ran up the house stairway, holding the light high and shading her dazzled eyes from its flame. Before she had gone halfway, Garth spoke.
"I saw her, Joan! I saw her go by! Oh, you were almost not in time, but you saved her!"
"Oh, I didn't," cried Joan, as she entered the room; "you saved her. Garth! You are hurt!"
For beside his forehead the pillow was dark with blood. Bending over him, she found the wound, a deep, irregular gash at the edge of his hair, not serious, but ugly enough.
"I didn't know it hit me so hard," he said, as Joan poured some water into a basin and searched Jim's medicine-chest for the iodine. "What a mess! I'm awfully sorry."
"What hit you? How did it happen?"
She was trying desperately hard to speak in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone. She still saw the great bow of the transport reeling back from the Reef. She wished that Garth would cry, that she might, too.
"It was when I got the knife," he said. "That was the hardest part. I got on the chest—it took an awfully long time—and I couldn't reach, so I knocked the knife off with my chin, or something, and of course the telescope went, too."
"That was what I heard, then."
"Partly, but perhaps some of it was me, because I sort of fell off the chest then, and the iron corner of it hit me a whack on the head. That was why I didn't answer you for a minute; I felt rather funny. Oh!"
He stiffened under the blanket and caught Joan's hand. The iodine was not pleasant.
"Better in a minute," Joan said. "Think of the soldiers, having it put on such big wounds. What did you do then?"
"It took me ever so long to find where I'd knocked the knife to," he said, "but I found it after a while and came along back."
"Those stairs!" Joan said. "Oh, I don't see how you did it."
"The stairs were really about the easiest part," he said. "I used to have to go up and down stairs that way when I was little, before I could walk very well, only not with my hands tied, of course. How nicely you did the bandage, Joan."
She smoothed it over his forehead and stood looking down at him. His eyes were full of an unutterable weariness; the inert lines of his whole figure showed complete exhaustion. She knew that nothing but the terrific stimulus of excitement kept him up at all.
"You must try to sleep, darling," she said, "while I think what to do next."
"I can't sleep," he said. "Where are Mudder and Fogger? How are we going to get them? Oh, talk to me! I—I've got to talk. I can't go to sleep."
"T've been wondering how we can find them," she said. "The Germans may have them as prisoners on one of the islands, or—oh, I don't know what."
"Can't you go in to Quimpaug," Garth said, "and call some people to help?"
"I couldn't leave you. Besides, Quimpaug never would wake up enough to help me. The Life Saving Station would be a better place. I can't understand why they haven't come long ago to find out about the Light."
"Of course that's the place to go!" Garth cried. He was twisting the edge of the sheet nervously. "Right away! The Germans may have Fogger and Mudder in their launch and be going out to a submarine at full speed. Oh, don't stop for anything, Joan! The Coast Guard people have a huge big power-boat that might catch them. Go!"
"And leave you here alone? Suppose that they came back, the Germans? Though I don't think they will. They must have been frightened when they saw the Light go on again." She made up her mind. "Yes, I will go. I'm sure they're not taking your father and mother to a submarine, but I do think they may be in danger. And the spies mustn't escape, if we can help it. I'll go. Oh, good-by! Are you afraid?"
"Yes, I am," Garth said, as she took her hand from his. "Good-by, Joan."