The Crack of Doom

  CHAPTER XX.

  CONCLUSION.

  Taking up my girl's body in my arms, I stumbled over thewreck-encumbered deck, and bore it to the state-room she had occupied onthe outward voyage. Percival was too busy attending to wounded sailorsto be interrupted. His services, I knew, were useless now, but I wantedhim to refute or corroborate a conviction which my own medical knowledgehad forced upon me. The thought was so repellent, I clung to any hopewhich might lead to its dispersion. I waited alone with my dead.

  Percival came after an hour, which seemed to me an eternity. Hestammered out some incoherent words of sympathy as soon as he looked inmy face. But this was not the purpose for which I had detached him fromhis pressing duties elsewhere. I made a gesture towards the dead girl.He attended to it immediately. I watched closely and took care that thelight should be on his face, so that I might read his eyes rather thanlisten to his words.

  "She has fainted!" he exclaimed, as he approached the rigid figure. Isaid nothing until he turned and faced me. Then I read his eyes. He saidslowly: "You are aware, Marcel, that--that she is dead?"

  "I am."

  "That she has been dead--several hours?"

  "I am."

  "But let me think. It was only an hour--"

  "No; do not think," I interrupted. "There are things in this voyagewhich will not bear to be thought of. I thank you for coming so soon.You will forgive me for troubling you when you have so much to doelsewhere. And now leave us alone. I mean, leave me alone."

  He pressed my hand, and went away without a word. I am that man'sfriend.

  They buried her at sea.

  I was happily unconscious at the time, and so was spared that scene.Edith Metford, weak and suffering as she was, went through it all. Shehas told me nothing about it, save that it was done. More than that Icould not bear. And I have borne much.

  The voyage home was a dreary episode. There is little more to tell, andit must be told quickly. Percival was kind, but it distressed me to findthat he now plainly regarded me as weak-minded from the stress of mytrouble. Once, in the extremity of my misery, I began a relation of myadventures to him, for I wanted his help. The look upon his face wasenough for me. I did not make the same mistake again.

  To Anderson I made amends for my extravagant display of temper. Hereceived me more kindly than I expected. I no longer thought of themoney that had passed between us. And, to do him tardy justice, I do notthink he thought of it either. At least he did not offer any of it back.His scruples, I presume, were conscientious. Indeed, I was no longerworth a man's enmity. Sympathy was now the only indignity that could beput upon me. And Anderson did not trespass in that direction. My miserywas, I thought, complete. One note must still be struck in that longdiscord of despair.

  We were steaming along the southern coast of Java. For many hours therugged cliffs and giant rocks which fence the island against theonslaught of the Indian Ocean had passed before us as in review, andwe--Edith Metford and I--sat on the deck silently, with many thoughts incommon, but without the interchange of a spoken word. The stern,forbidding aspect of that iron coast increased the gloom which hadsettled on my brain. Its ramparts of lonely sea-drenched crags depressedme below the mental zero that was now habitual with me. The sun wentdown in a red glare, which moved me not. The short twilight passedquickly, but I noticed nothing. Then night came. The restless seadisappeared in darkness. The grand march past of the silent stars began.But I neither knew nor cared.

  A soft whisper stirred me.

  "Arthur, for God's sake rouse yourself! You are brooding a great dealtoo much. It will destroy you."

  Listlessly I put my hand in hers, and clasped her fingers gently.

  "Bear with me!" I pleaded.

  "I will bear with you for ever. But you must fight on. You have not wonyet."

  "No, nor ever shall. I have fought my last fight. The victory may go towhosoever desires it."

  On this she wept. I could not bear that she should suffer from mymisery, and so, guarding carefully her injured arm, I drew her close tome. And then, out of the darkness of the night, far over the solitude ofthe sea, there came to us the sound of a voice. That voice was a woman'swail. The girl beside me shuddered and drew back. I did not ask her ifshe had heard. I knew she had heard.

  We arose and stood apart without any explanation. From that moment acaress would have been a sacrilege. I did not hear that weird soundagain, nor aught else for an hour or more save the bursting of thebreakers on the crags of Java.

  I kept no record of the commonplaces of our voyage thereafter. It onlyremains for me to say that I arrived in England broken in health andbankrupt in fortune. Brande left no money. His formula for thetransmutation of metals is unintelligible to me. I can make no use ofit.

  Edith Metford remains my friend. To part utterly after what we haveundergone together is beyond our strength. But between us there is anameless shadow, reminiscent of that awful night in the Arafura Sea,when death came very near to us. And in my ears there is always the echoof that voice which I heard by the shores of Java when the mistyborderland between life and death seemed clear.

  My story is told. I cannot prove its truth, for there is much in it towhich I am the only living witness. I cannot prove whether HerbertBrande was a scientific magician possessed of _all_ the powers heclaimed, or merely a mad physicist in charge of a new and terribleexplosive; nor whether Edward Grey ever started for Labrador. Theburthen of the proof of this last must be borne by others--unless it beleft to Grey himself to show whether my evidence is false or true. Ifit be left to him, a few years will decide the issue.

  I am content to wait.

  THE END.

  LONDON: DIGBY, LONG AND CO., PUBLISHERS, 18 BOUVERIE STREET, FLEETSTREET, E.C.