The Frozen Deep

“I can see nothing either, Lucy.”

“And yet you are trembling as if there was something dreadful in the view from this door.”

“There is something dreadful! I feel it, though I see nothing. I feel it, nearer and nearer in the empty air, darker and darker in the sunny light. I don’t know what it is. Take me away! No. Not out on the beach. I can’t pass the door. Somewhere else! somewhere else!”

Mrs. Crayford looked round her, and noticed a second door at the inner end of the boat-house. She spoke to her husband.

“See where that door leads to, William.”

Crayford opened the door. It led into a desolate inclosure, half garden, half yard. Some nets stretched on poles were hanging up to dry. No other objects were visible—not a living creature appeared in the place. “It doesn’t look very inviting, my dear,” said Mrs. Crayford. “I am at your service, however. What do you say?”

She offered her arm to Clara as she spoke. Clara refused it. She took Crayford’s arm, and clung to him.

“I’m frightened, dreadfully frightened!” she said to him, faintly. “You keep with me—a woman is no protection; I want to be with you.” She looked round again at the boat-house doorway. “Oh!” she whispered, “I’m cold all over— I’m frozen with fear of this place. Come into the yard! Come into the yard!”

“Leave her to me,” said Crayford to his wife. “I will call you, if she doesn’t get better in the open air.”

He took her out at once, and closed the yard door behind them.

“Mr. Steventon, do you understand this?” asked Mrs. Crayford. “What can she possibly be frightened of?”

She put the question, still looking mechanically at the door by which her husband and Clara had gone out. Receiving no reply, she glanced round at Steventon. He was standing on the opposite side of the luncheon-table, with his eyes fixed attentively on the view from the main doorway of the boat-house. Mrs. Crayford looked where Steventon was looking. This time there was something visible. She saw the shadow of a human figure projected on the stretch of smooth yellow sand in front of the boat-house.

In a moment more the figure appeared. A man came slowly into view, and stopped on the threshold of the door.

Chapter 18.

The man was a sinister and terrible object to look at. His eyes glared like the eyes of a wild animal; his head was bare; his long gray hair was torn and tangled; his miserable garments hung about him in rags. He stood in the doorway, a speechless figure of misery and want, staring at the well-spread table like a hungry dog.

Steventon spoke to him.

“Who are you?”

He answered, in a hoarse, hollow voice,

“A starving man.”

He advanced a few steps, slowly and painfully, as if he were sinking under fatigue.

“Throw me some bones from the table,” he said. “Give me my share along with the dogs.”

There was madness as well as hunger in his eyes while he spoke those words. Steventon placed Mrs. Crayford behind him, so that he might be easily able to protect her in case of need, and beckoned to two sailors who were passing the door of the boat-house at the time.

“Give the man some bread and meat,” he said, “and wait near him.”

The outcast seized on the bread and meat with lean, long-nailed hands that looked like claws. After his first mouthful of the food, he stopped, considered vacantly with himself, and broke the bread and meat into two portions. One portion he put into an old canvas wallet that hung over his shoulder; the other he devoured voraciously. Steventon questioned him.

“Where do you come from?”

“From the sea.”

“Wrecked?”

“Yes.”

Steventon turned to Mrs. Crayford.

“There may be some truth in the poor wretch’s story,” he said. “I heard something of a strange boat having been cast on the beach thirty or forty miles higher up the coast. When were you wrecked, my man?”

The starving creature looked up from his food, and made an effort to collect his thoughts—to exert his memory. It was not to be done. He gave up the attempt in despair. His language, when he spoke, was as wild as his looks.

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “I can’t get the wash of the sea out of my ears. I can’t get the shining stars all night, and the burning sun all day, out of my brain. When was I wrecked? When was I first adrift in the boat? When did I get the tiller in my hand and fight against hunger and sleep? When did the gnawi ng in my breast, and the burning in my head, first begin? I have lost all reckoning of it. I can’t think; I can’t sleep; I can’t get the wash of the sea out of my ears. What are you baiting me with questions for? Let me eat!”

Even the sailors pitied him. The sailors asked leave of their officer to add a little drink to his meal.

“We’ve got a drop of grog with us, sir, in a bottle. May we give it to him?”

“Certainly!”

He took the bottle fiercely, as he had taken the food, drank a little, stopped, and considered with himself again. He held up the bottle to the light, and, marking how much liquor it contained, carefully drank half of it only. This done, he put the bottle in his wallet along with the food.

“Are you saving it up for another time?” said Steventon.