"Exactly." Damien nodded again. "That's why I want to get her out on the water."
"You mean hair-of-the-dog?"
Damien said, "Yes. Have I your permission?"
The Professor chuckled. "What gave you the idea that Geraldine ever asks for permission?"
Manning shrugged. "Permission is just an outdated viewpoint of my own. Incidentally, I think Miss Prosset could do with a lot of outdated viewpoints."
The Professor shrugged back. He accepted the headmaster's help down from the rock.
"You have it, then, as well as my permission to go ahead with any other prescribed viewpoints, outdated or otherwise." For a moment his eyes met Manning's, caught a question there and answered it with a glance. "I was an indulgent parent, I'm afraid," he finished, and he grinned,
Manning had smiled, too, he recalled, as he was smiling now.
"Yes, I have seen your father, Miss Prosset," he reported. "He is all approval."
"I'm not going."
"Oh, come now, must you demand your pound of flesh?" "I don't understand you."
"Then I'll put it in plain words. That slap in the water yesterday was no friendly salutation. I admit it freely. But I was hoping this outing would comprise my vindication."
She flushed vividly, but before she could speak he continued.
"Mind you, the punishment was something you richly deserved, and I still believe you got off lightly. However, we can discuss that further at Harvest Home."
She said evasively, "I can't go. I—I don't think I'm strong enough. My legs are wobbly."
"If you get up now and move around you'll be right by this afternoon."
"Mr. Manning, if all this is just to save you a verbal apology
"It isn't. I want to go. Obstinate child, aren't you?" "I'm not a child, I'm—"
"I know, nineteen rising twenty. You told me so once before. Tiptoe to womanhood, Miss Prosset, and you'll have to stand on tiptoe, too. There's not much of you, is there?" His eyes deliberately measured her small slim length beneath the sheets.
She found to her annoyance that she was flushing. He noticed the flush and raised one eyebrow. It gave him an amused look.
"I'm glad," she said stiffly, "you find it so funny. And I still do not intend to go to Harvest Island."
She was too late. Already he was slamming the bedroom door behind him He called, "I'll fix up the boat," and the front door followed suit.
CHAPTER XVII
THE moment Damien left the house Gerry knew that to
remain in bed a moment longer would be dire punishment.
She jumped up and ran to the window, a rather incongruous figure in Aunt Isabel's voluminous nightdress and Cynthia's beautiful cape.
She looked anxiously out. Yes, it was going to be fine. She knew it because the crab daisies' petals were fully open.
She looked beyond the daisies to the sea. There, looking
like some enchanted lilac land, lay Harvest Home Island, withdrawn as ever, unreal, a faerie place with its beauty locked tantalizingly away.
Gerry remembered that morning that Damien and Cynthia had taken out the boat. She wondered where they had gone. Anyhow it had not been to the island, for Mr. Manning had said when he had asked her to go, "I want to see it very much."
There was a tiny cloud on the horizon. It was no more than a wisp of grey. Gerry knew such signs usually portend a change on this eastern Australian coast. She turned away, pretending she had not noticed' it.
Downstairs, Damien Manning saw the cloud, too. He also refused to acknowledge it. He was out to settle a debt, he told Aunt Isabel, to work out an apology, and he was not going to allow a mere spot in the far distance to deter him Aunt Isabel asked whether enjoyment to himself as well as an apology to Miss Prosset came into the business, and she smiled as he pretended too much absorption with the assembly of the afternoon's gear to reply.
Hand lines to throw out on their way to Harvest, a rug, cushions, chocolate as well as the afternoon tea hamper were gathered. Then sou'westers, of course.
They left early. As Gerry waited on the beach for Damien to load the boat she sniffed that familiar tang of salt and seaweed and knew at once the old enchantment. She could hardly wait to push off.
Damien carried the engine up to the boat-house and came back with the oars. She could see he was happy. His eyes were shining as any of his boys' eyes might have shone. He looked almost like a boy himself. "This is the only way," he told her. "Engines smell of factories and highways, oars just smell of tar and heaven."
She laughed, and in that moment he had swung her into his arms and carried her out to the mooring.
"I could have waded," she protested.
"Sit there," he answered, "and don't fidget. Know anything about correct behaviour in a boat?"
"Do you know anything about a boat?" she retorted, but he made no answer.
Instead, he concentrated on weaving through the breaking surf, then, once clear, he settled down to an easy stroke.
There was a pleasant swell. Caught up with the rhythm of it, Damien became the entertainer as well as the skipper.
He told Gerry robust tales of sea adventures he had heard when he was a boy in Cornwall. He salted the adventures with sea oaths and sea lingo. He enjoyed the recounting. He found those acorn eyes uncommonly receptive.
After a while he sang. He had a virile baritone. His shanties lost nothing in the slap of the waves and the sough of the wind.
"Yo-ho-heavo, hey idlee eh." He paused to explain that that was what they sang in windjammers.
"I know. The Professor told me." Gerry finished triumphantly, "Round come roundy, hey idlee eh."
"Give me the sea any time," called Damien, and, remembering the Professor's words on equality, "There everyone rates the same."
She looked at him in challenge. "Surely a sweeping statement for the master of Galdang."
"You can never forget your Barbary, can you?" he flung back.
"No, I can't." Her reply was flung, too.
He was silent a moment, then he shrugged and smiled. "I'll pass it. I told you this morning that on Harvest Home we were on neutral territory."
"We're not at Harvest yet."
"No—first we must do some fishing." He shipped oars, hove-to, baited a line, let it whistle expertly through the air, then handed it to Gerry.
She watched him throw out his own line in a silence that had been strictly impressed upon her from her childhood by the Professor. It stretched into a long silence as they waited for action.
Gerry had no luck, but Manning indicated with a lift of his brows that he was on to something substantial.
He let her feel the weight, then as the fight began he took over from her, and she watched excitedly and a little dismayed as a large schnapper rose to flog the green swelling surface. Gerry had never cared for catching fish.
The schnapper rolled and struggled as it tried to shake off the hook. Gerry, glancing at Damien's face, hoped secretly and very fervently that it would. He seemed to sense her wish and grimly renewed his hold.
All at once it seemed to the girl more than a fight
between fish and man, it was an unacknowledged struggle between a man and a woman, between Damien Manning and herself. Again the flogging surface, then with a defiant slap of its tail the great fish was gone again to the bottom. Gerry could have cheered.
Her companion did not lose his patience. His long, rather sensitive mouth merely thinned to a stubborn line. Gerry looked at him secretively, searchingly, facing up honestly and squarely at last to what she found in this Damien Manning.
Here is the man I love yet do not like, she acknowledged, and he would be a hard man. He would be a man who would have his way always; he would be a master. He would not know the word surrender—that would be left to the woman he chose for his mate. And he would choose her coolly, detachedly, using reason, not emotion. There would be no wild ecstasy, no resignation to fate.
Damien had looked up. He had caught her out in her s
earching. He did not speak, but his cool glance seemed to underline every word her mind had said. Quite true, madam, the eyes seemed to flicker, I would have my way, I would be master, surrender would be left to the woman.
Then, for the briefest of moments, so ephemeral that she might have dreamed it, there was a softening somewhere and the eyes added another message. It would be sweet surrender, they said.
Gerry turned away from him, aware suddenly that she was trembling. She felt his glance on her as she bent her head.
Ten minutes later he was still working on the line with rising pressure when he became aware of the weather.
Geraldine had noticed it before, but she had not dared interrupt that disciplined drill of relaxed then taut fingers.
Glancing skyward, Damien muttered angrily.
Although the waters were still bright, the skies held a dark grievance there was no mistaking. The little grey warning had come true.
"Why in the name of reason didn't you tell me?" he flung. "Are you quite stupid?" He began pulling in the lines as fast as he could. His expression was thunderous, but all Gerry was conscious of was a wicked glee that the fish, and not Damien Manning, had won.
"Put this on and wipe that grin off your face," he corn
manded, and the clumsy water-proof was thrown on her lap.
"I don't want it."
"Do as you're told."
"It's not raining yet."
"I said do as you're told."
She hesitated, then struggled into the thing, hearing the harsh rustle as he struggled into his. He began to weigh anchor.
"Can I help?" She had to call it twice, for the wind had risen.
He turned for a bare moment. In that moment his eyes ran quickly over the small figure in the black oilskins. This girl, he thought half-soberly, half-humorously, seems born for trouble. First there was that day up at the house when I nearly belted and did push her; the shark episode, and now, this. I should have paid heed to that horizon wisp this morning. We're running into a bad squall.
"Can I help, Mr. Manning?"
"Yes, by sitting still and being a good girl. We're in for it, I'm afraid. Don't be nervous. I've handled boats before this."
"In England." She could not, resist that.
"Yes, in England. Good lord, woman, does this country have to have a priority even in storms?"
The sky was black now. The sea had risen considerably. Gerry could hear the deepening rush of water along the planks and she saw that the waves had angry crests.
Almost at once the boat began lifting as though in the claws of a bird, then dropping immediately into a foaming trough. The bow thrust deeper, then deeper into the water, and the waves cascaded over the oilskinned figures. It began to rain.
Gerry huddled down, hearing the javelin-like drops break over her as though they were beating on an iron roof. The gale was screeching its hate of them when she ventured up the next time, and it was as dark as night.
Through sleet, stinging her face like sharp arrows, she looked across to Damien. He did not look back. He did not have time. His face was grim and set.
Again Gerry huddled down, not frightened but realizing that this was no time for disobedience of an order, knowing she would help most by keeping still and silent.
After what seemed ages she heard Damien call, "Hang on, hang hard, Geraldine."
She shut her eyes in sudden fear and obediently "hung". With a roar of angry surf and with waves slobbering greedily over them, the boat began to flounder heavily forward.
A brief moment of panic assailed Gerry, then she heard the raw scrape of a pebbled bottom and knew with relief that Damien had made shore.
She tumbled clumsily out, not lifted by the man this time, and helped him to run the boat to safety.
A third figure had joined them. Through the blinding sleet and with the aid of the hurricane lamp he carried, Gerry saw it was a fisherman.
Together he and Damien upended the craft and made it secure.
"Bit dirty," said the man, expressing, Gerry thought, vast understatement. He nodded to the angry water. "I saw you out there earlier and reckoned you must be making for here."
Gerry was swaying clumsily on her sea-heavy feet. "Where are we?"
"Where were you bound?"
"Harvest Home Island," said Damien, then with quiet assurance, "and I believe we are there."
How could he know, thought Geraldine, with a visibility like that . . . All the same she was not really surprised when the fisherman answered, "Yes, you're there."
... So Mr. Manning again was right.
"You would be Clem Athol?" asked Damien.
"Clem Athol's the name. Go straight up the track and you'll find my shelter. As soon as I fix my own tubs I'll be along."
It was pelting rain now, the sort of rain that even the most protective oilskin cannot discourage. Gerry and Damien struggled side by side up the dim track, Gerry wondering how they would ever pick out the fisherman's shelter, but presently there was a blur even darker than the dark night. As they came closer it took on the shape of a rough shack.
Manning pushed against the door, pulled her in, then shoved the door shut again with his foot.
Inside, there was no visibility at all.
She could hear Damien going through his pockets for his matches. He found them and began to scratch at the box but there was no result. "Soaked," he said, and tried again with another box with the same answer.
Then suddenly, illuminatingly, although there was no light it was not dark any more.
Gerry could not have explained it, but she knew that Damien, too, had sensed that light.
All at once he stopped striking the matches against the box, and waited.
They both waited in the darkness, a suddenly warmly-encompassing darkness side by side, quite close to each other yet not touching.
It was so bright, thought Gerry with awe and wonder, that she could have called out to him that the sun was shining. With an uprush of happiness she knew it was because he was there with her.
CHAPTER XVIII
GERRY could not have said afterwards how long they stood there. Perhaps it was only a few minutes, perhaps it was an hour.
The sound of Athol's wellington boots squelching up the track broke the enchantment. Although their hands had not touched they drew away from each other. When the fisherman put his hurricane lamp down on a crude table Gerry was at one end of the room, Damien at the other. In between were Athol and the lamp.
The lamp searched the corners to soak up the shadows. It illumined a rough unlined room containing only the bare essentials. There was a bed among these and the fisherman said cheerfully, "It's a wide crib, mister," taking it for granted, flushed Geraldine, that they were man and wife.
Damien said, "This is Miss Prosset. I am Manning from Galdang."
Athol grinned sheepishly and took Gerry's hand. He said, "There's only one cot."
"And it's yours, Mr. Athol."
"No, miss, "yours. 'Tisn't often Harvest has visitors for the night."
"I expect it will be for the night." It was Damien speaking. He had crossed to the narrow slit of window where wind and rain were scratching as though to get in. The storm, thought Gerry, was like a malicious cat.
"Yes," said Athol, "it'll be an island crib for you tonight, Mr. Manning. Shack isn't a mansion but at least it's a refuge."
"A blessed refuge," praised Gerry, and she tried the bed.
It certainly would not have suited Semple, but she found it heavenly. It was all she could do not to throw her tired body down at once.
Clem Athol, however, had other ideas. He was enjoying his company.
He had lit a fire in the rough chimney where the wind was sobbing and beating like a bird with prisoned wings.
"I'll make cocoa," he said. "No milk and not much sugar, and you'll have to share the cup."
Gerry remembered the tasty afternoon tea she had seen being packed and which was now probably tossed on the beach if n
ot already at the bottom of the ocean, and she laughed ruefully. "So long," she stipulated to the fisherman, "as it's hot."
It was hot, so hot that she insisted on Damien having the first turn.
"You're better than I am at it," she judged.
Surprised, he taunted, "Is this Geraldine Prosset admitting superiority in someone else?"
Clem Athol was dividing the blankets. "I'll put you this side of the fire, Mr. Manning, and myself on that."
"There are some advantages to being a lady," rejoiced Gerry, sinking down on the cot that she was sure at this moment she would not have changed for Semple's breathing rubber.
"But surely," agreed Damien significantly. "I believe you found that out once before."
She did not answer him, but she knew if the lamp had been stronger she would have seen his grin reminding her
of one day up at Galdang when he had taken her for one of the lads.
She flushed, glad of the dimness and its concealment, pushing out her tired limbs to the end of the crib.
The room was soaked with salt, but it was more pleasant than unpleasant. Pleasant, too, the desultory talk of the men.
". . . Take Blue Groper," Athol was telling Manning, "groper are solid fighters. They have the urge to run under rocky ledges and amongst kelp when hooked, so they are not easy to beat."
She heard their voices as in the distance, then the two voices were one voice, then even that was gone.
When she opened her eyes the storm was over but it was still night. She could see the fingers of a tea tree outside the narrow window patterning the sky.
She did not stir, so she wondered how Damien knew she had awakened. He must have, though, for he spoke softly above the fisherman's snores.
"Geraldine—"
"Yes?"
"Feeling better?"
"I think I felt all right all the time."
"Never frightened?"
"No, never frightened."
He said gently and gratefully, "Good girl."
"There was nothing good about it, I just had confidence in you."
"On sea but not on land, eh? I'll have to remember that."
Will You Surrender? Page 14
