CHAPTER XI
THE PLUNGE!
Dazed though Stern was at his first realization of theimpending horror, yet through his fear for Beatrice, still asleepamong her furs, struggled a vast wonder at the meaning, thepossibility of such a phenomenon.
How could a current like that rush up along the Sound? How could therebe a cataract, sucking down the waters of the sea itself--whithercould it fall? Even at that crisis the man's scientific curiosity wasaroused; he felt, subconsciously, the interest of the trained observerthere in the midst of deadly peril.
But the moment demanded action.
Quickly Stern dropped to the deck, and, noiseless as a cat in hisdoe-skin sandals, ran aft.
But even before he had executed the instinctive tactic of shifting thehelm, paying off, and trying to beat up into the faint breeze that nowdrifted over the swirling current, he realized its futility andabandoned it.
"No use," thought he. "About as effective as trying to dip up theocean with a spoon. Any use to try the sweeps? Maybe she and Itogether could swing away out of the current--make the shore--nothingelse to do--I'll try it, anyhow."
Beside the girl he knelt.
"Beta! Beta!" he whispered in her ear. He shook her gently by the arm."Come, wake up, girlie--there's work to do here!"
She, submerged in healthy sleep, sighed deeply and murmured someunintelligible thing; but Stern persisted. And in a minute or so thereshe was, sitting up in the bottom of the yawl among the furs.
In the dim moonlight her face seemed a vague sweet flower shadowed bythe dark, wind-blown masses of her hair. Stern felt the warmth,scented the perfume of her firm, full-blooded flesh. She put a hand toher hair; her tiger-skin robe, falling back to the shoulder, revealedher white and beautiful arm.
All at once she drew that arm about the man and brought him close toher breast.
"Oh, Allan!" she breathed. "My boy! Where are we? What is it? Oh, Iwas sleeping so soundly! Have we reached harbor yet? What's thatnoise--that roaring sound? Surf?"
For a moment he could not answer. She, sensing some trouble, peeredclosely at him.
"What is it, Allan?" cried she, her woman's intuition telling her oftrouble. "Tell me--is anything wrong?"
"Listen, dearest!"
"Yes, what?"
"We're in some kind of--of--"
"What? Danger?"
"Well, it may be. I don't know yet. But there's something wrong. Yousee--"
"Oh, Allan!" she exclaimed, and started up. "Why didn't you waken mebefore? What is it? What can I do to help?"
"I think there's rough water ahead, dear," the engineer answered,trying to steady his voice, which shook a trifle in spite of him. "Atany rate, it sounds like a waterfall of some kind or other; and see,there's a line, a drift of vapor rising over there. We're beingcarried toward it on a strong current."
Anxiously she peered, now full awake. Then she turned to Allan.
"Can't we sail away?"
"Not enough wind. We might possibly row out of the current, and--andperhaps--"
"Give me one of the sweeps quick, quick!"
He put the sweeps out. No sooner had he braced himself against a ribof the yawl and thrown his muscles against the heavy bar than she,too, was pulling hard.
"Not too strong at first, dear," he cautioned. "Don't use up all yourstrength in the first few minutes. We may have a long fight for it!"
"I'm in it with you--till the end--whichever way it ends," sheanswered; and in the moonlight he saw the untrammeled swing and playof her magnificent body.
The yawl came round slowly till it was crosswise to the current,headed toward the mainland shore. Now it began to make a littleheadway. But the breeze slightly impeded it.
Stern whipped out his knife and slashed the sheets of platted rush.The sail crumpled, crackled and slid down; and now under a bare polethe boat cradled slowly ahead transversely across the foam-streakedcurrent that ran swiftly soughing toward the dim vapor-swirls away tothe northeast.
No word was spoken now. Both Beatrice and Stern lay to the sweeps;both braced themselves and put the full force of back and arms intoeach long, powerful stroke. Yet Stern could see that, at the rate ofprogress they were making over that black and oily swirl, they couldnot gain ten feet while the current was carrying them a thousand.
In his heart he knew the futility of the fight, yet still he fought.Still Beatrice fought for life, too, there by his side. Humaninstinct, the will to live, drove them on, on, where both understoodthere was no hope.
For now already the current had quickened still more. The breeze hadsprung up from the opposite direction; Stern knew the boiling rush ofwaters had already reached a speed greater than that of the winditself. No longer the stars trembled, reflected, in the waters. Allugly, frothing, broken, the swift current foamed and leaped, in long,horrible gulfs and crests of sickening velocity.
And whirlpools now began to form. The yawl was twisted like a straw,wrenched, hurled, flung about with sickening violence.
"Row! _Row!_" Stern cried none the less. And his muscles bunched andhardened with the labor; his veins stood out, and sweat dropped fromhis brow, ran into his eyes, and all but blinded him.
The girl, too, was laboring with all her might. Stern heard herbreath, gasping and quick, above the roar and swash of the mad waters.And all at once revulsion seized him--rage, and a kind of madexultation, a defiance of it all.
He dropped the sweep and sprang to her.
"Beta!" he shouted, louder than the droning tumult. "No use! No use atall! Here--come to me!"
He drew the sweep inboard and flung it in the bottom of the yawl.
Already the vapors of the cataract ahead were drifting over them anddriving in their faces. A vibrant booming shuddered through the darkair, where now even the moon's faint light was all extinguished by thewhirling mists.
Heaven and sea shook with the terrible concussion of falling waters.Though Stern had shouted, yet the girl could not have heard him now.
In the gloom he peered at her; he took her in his arms. Her face waspale, but very calm. She showed no more fear than the man; each seemedinspired with some strange exultant thought of death, there with theother.
He drew her to his breast and covered her face; he knelt with heramong the heaped-up furs, and then, as the yawl plunged more violentlystill, they sank down in the poor shelter of the cabin and waited.
His arms were about her; her face was buried on his breast. Hesmoothed her hair; his lips pressed her forehead.
"Good-by!" he whispered, though she could not hear.
They seemed now to hover on the very brink.
A long, racing sluicelike incline of black waters, streaked withswirls of white, appeared before them. The boat plunged and whirled,dipped, righted, and sped on.
Behind, a huge, rushing, wall-like mass of lathering, leaping surges.In front, a vast nothingness, a black, unfathomable void, up throughwhich gushed in clouds the mighty jets of vapor.
Came a lurch, a swift plunge.
The boat hung suspended a moment.
Stern saw what seemed a long, clear, greenish slant of water. Deafenedand dazed by the infernal pandemonium of noise, he bowed his head onhers, and his arms tightened.
Suddenly everything dropped away. The universe crashed and bellowed.
Stern felt a heavy dash of brine--cold, strangling, irresistible.
All grew black.
"_Death!_" thought he, and knew no more.
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