Chapter XVII: Forsaken of All

There were oars in the yacht’s boat, but the current ran so swiftly that Marian was unable to fix them in the rowlocks before the tide caught the little ship in its embrace and swept it out towards the open sea. So rapid was the race that the panorama of crag and headland about her seemed to be hidden in a moment from her sight. Turn where she would she espied an horizon of fog and vapour. The searching white mists of morning lay upon the sea in billows of chilling cloud. No breath of wind stirred to sweep the Gulf and roll up this veil which hid the world from her sight. Calm--the calm that those upon the _Esmeralda_ had wished for--had come at last. But the very silence of it was a terror to the helpless girl cast adrift at the whim of impulse, the martyr to a woman’s logic and a woman’s love.

Swiftly the current ran, but silently, so that no sound broke the stillness save the lap of the water upon the prow. Minutes were numbered, but were hours for her. She heard bells ringing strangely through the curtain of the fog, and wondered if they were the bells of a town. Anon the sound of waves breaking upon some strand spoke either of the coast of Finland or of the shore of a neighbouring island; but she could make out no land looming through the haze, and though she tried to row the boat in the direction of the bells, the current mastered her, and she was borne on, she knew not whither. It seemed to her that Fate was carrying her out to the death of the veiled sea. While the mist benumbed her hands and drenched her clothes, and the spray sparkled upon her face, an anger of impulse still drove her on, she cared not to what end if her lover might thereby be saved. He had suffered that she might be free; she would suffer that his country might be given back to him.

“I will save him!” was her cry, oft repeated, while she used her oars desperately and shut her lips firmly as though to help the resolution. “They will find him alone, and he will be able to make some excuse. He will say that I am dead.”

At other times she would laugh aloud, asking herself what she must look like with her hair drenched and dank, and her face white and pinched, and her gown bedraggled. She said that old Stefanovitch would make love to her no more if he could see her at such a moment. She ceased to row a little while that she might recall all his leers and amorous antics--how long ago it was since they had been a part of her daily life! Or she would gaze wistfully at the barrier of fog, as though seeking beyond it a lamp of destiny which should show her the course. Death itself must be like this solitude; the stillness of the grave could bring no greater terror than the terror of one drifting in the loom of mists, far from friends and from men.

“I must not think,” she said, beginning to row again with new energy. “There will be sunshine presently, and then it will be different. I shall put ashore on some island, and the fishermen will give me food and take me across to Sweden. Paul will go back to Russia. I have done right, and have only myself to blame.”

She longed for sunshine as the sick long after the vigil of a night of waking. The folly of putting out to sea in a boat which carried neither food nor drink became more apparent to her every hour. There were moments of regret, when she began to wonder if Paul would follow her, when she hated the obscurity of day, which was her shield against pursuit. Hunger now began to forewarn her of added suffering to come. The biting air of morning and the labour of the oar were foes to the little reserve of strength which had nerved her to flight. She said that none but a woman would have done so foolish a thing, and laughed at herself because she had done it. When she found herself able to row no more than a dozen strokes at a spell, when her head began to swim and all nature cried out for food, she laughed no more, but bit her lips again, and remembered that it was for her lover’s life. And so day came up at last out of the sea, and the curtain of the mist was rolled back.

Gradually, as though a hand from the ether was stretched out to scatter it, the fog lifted. A golden sea shone beneath, rippling, sparkling with jewels of light. Farther back, and yet farther, showing new glories of the mirror of waters, the curtain was drawn. Marian beheld the red disc of the sun like a mighty globe hanging in the east; she saw a new world rise up out of the dissolving fog. Jagged crags of rock stood suddenly in the path of the current. Shapes as of cliffs and domes of granite were formed against the white background. A new warmth suffused the whole air softly; the outposts of the night were rolled back until day triumphed and all the sea was glorious with its radiance.

For some little while the girl sat entranced at the spectacle. The current, which had borne her vessel to this new scene, no longer raced toward the open sea. The tide was on the turn, and the boat rested in the slack of the water. Far away, beyond many a reef and boulder, lay the greater waters of the Gulf. She spied out the shape of a vessel lying at anchor there, and her first thought was that a Russian ship had come to the islands in pursuit of the _Esmeralda_. She said that it would find Paul alone. As for herself, there was no longer need to fear. Islands lay all about her. Here and there she perceived smoke rising from some cot or village; the friendly sea brought her almost to the very beach of an islet green and ripe with spring grasses. She rowed to its sandy shore, and dragging the boat as far as her strength would permit up on a ridge of shingle, she set out to discover upon what kind of a haven she had fallen. Never did woman set foot upon land more gladly. Wet and cold and miserable, knowing well that she stood alone in the world, conscious that the Russian guarded the gate by which she must pass to England, nevertheless the sunshine was as wine to her, the warmth of morning as a gift of God. Impulsively, with a child’s joy, she ran to the higher places of the island; she wrung her wet clothes and bound her unkempt hair again. There would be fishermen’s huts upon the other side, she said; they would give her food for charity’s sake; she would make them understand, it would be fun to do so. But when she stood upon the high place of her little kingdom she found that it was desolate as the other isles had been. No hut or cottage spoke of life awaking, or of men still at their sleep. The shrill note of the whirling birds, the splash of the sea upon the golden sands, were the voices of the sanctuary. Marian listened to them a little while as one who hears the tidings of surpassing ill. Then with a bitter cry of woe she ran down to the beach again.

She had thought to find her boat where she had left it, washed by the lips of the waves, but the tide had ebbed back a little way--for there is always a suggestion of tide in the Gulf--and the little ship lay high and dry upon a bed of oozy sand. Nor could all her strength move it again, even so much as a foot, from its resting-place. When she was sure of this, when she knew that she was alone upon that desolate isle, her courage forsook her for the first time since she had left Kronstadt, and she sank upon the sands weeping bitterly.

“Paul, Paul,” she cried, “come to me--do not leave me here alone!”

So she cried for her lover. A gull screaming above her head answered with a mocking note. Only the life-giving sunshine befriended one whom all the world had forsaken.