Out of the Storm E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

When her beloved parents die, lovely young Gail Desmond realizes she must find a job. Finally she finds a seemingly enviable position as a traveling companion to a woman of wealth, and soon they are off on an ocean voyage. Then disaster strikes! The ship on which Gail and her employer are traveling sinks. Suddenly Gail finds herself afloat on an angry sea, lashed to a makeshift raft, desperately trying to keep an unconscious man from slipping away from her—a man who was critically injured when he saved her life!

Leseprobe

Grace Livingston Hill

OUT OF THE STORM

Copyright

First published in 1929

Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

Gail Desmond was fast asleep in her upper berth in the steamer when the impact came and nearly shook her out.

She clung to the railing and summoned her dazed senses. There was a sound of things rending beneath her, a wild confusion of cries following an instant of terrifying silence, and then all else was obliterated by appalling clamor immediately set up by the frenzied little creature who belonged in the lower berth, who had been flung like a wisp of cloth across the stateroom and was lying on the floor half paralyzed with fear.

Mrs. Adelia Patton was a woman of wealth and refinement whose sole business in life had been to please herself. That Mr. Patton had early recognized this fact and obligingly taken himself out of this life, leaving behind a goodly fortune, had in no way hindered her in the pursuit of happiness. Gail Desmond had not been with her two hours as her newly hired companion before she recognized the fact that her employer was the most selfish woman she had ever known. Clinging now to the edge of her crazily tilted berth, in this desperate situation she had hard work not to despise the silly little woman who was screaming and wringing her hands and calling upon God to protect her as if she were the first concern in the universe.

With one quick dash of her hand, the girl rubbed the sleep from her eyes and sprang to the slanting floor of the stateroom, kneeling beside the frantic woman and placing a cool steady hand upon her forehead.

“Mrs. Patton, be quiet, please. It won’t do any good to scream that way. Are you hurt anywhere? Well, then please keep still till I can find out what is the matter. It may be nothing at all, and then, of course, you don’t want to make yourself ridiculous. If there is anything the matter, we shall need all our senses to get dressed and take care of ourselves.”

Her calm voice arrested the woman’s attention for an instant, but at the suggestion of anything being the matter she set up a hysterical scream that shivered through the girl’s sensitive frame till she felt as if she could strike the woman. However, there could be nothing gained by two people’s losing their heads, so she turned from her and hurriedly put on some clothes. Meantime, her employer lay huddled on the floor, complaining loudly:

“You’re an unfeeling girl to stand there taking care of yourself when I am dying of fright. Why don’t you do something? We may be going to the bottom. We shall drown! Oh dear—r—r—r! We shall dr—r—rown! And no one cares for me. No one cares for poor little me. I might have known that a hired companion would never think of me when a time of danger came! No one cares for me!”

Gail turned and swiftly caught the little creature in her arms, set her upon her feet, and gave her a shake.

“Be still!” she said indignantly. “No one could possibly care for you when you are acting like that. Sit down on the edge of the berth and put on your clothes quickly. We may not have any time to waste!”

“Oh, I can’t! I can’t!” wailed the poor woman, sinking down upon the floor again. “Don’t you see I’m all unnerved, you cruel girl! You’ll have to dress me yourself. What else am I paying you for? I shall certainly discharge you the minute we get to land. Such actions!”

“Mrs. Patton, look here,” said Gail, trying to speak calmly again, all the while fastening her own garments with rapid hands. “There isn’t time for you to act like a child. It may be as much as our lives are worth to stay here. You must put something on while I go out to see what is the matter.”

“Oh, you are not going to leave me here like a rat in a trap to drown, are you?” And the woman uttered another piercing scream.

At that, Gail went to the door of the stateroom and threw it open, regardless of the woman’s protests.

A steward was hurrying by.

“Collision!” he said succinctly before the girl had time to ask. “All on deck at once!” And he was gone.

The girl’s lips set firmly, and she turned to her companion, who had heard the word and was silent and wide-eyed with horror.

“Put this on!” she said sternly, seizing a large silk robe, which was the only available garment at hand to cover the woman.

“Oh, but I can’t go out on deck in that!” objected the vain woman. “Get that tweed suit of mine; that will be most suitable. And my hair, you’ll have to fix my hair. I couldn’t go out in crimping pins.”

“There isn’t time to get anything else,” said Gail severely, “and the steamer isn’t going to wait for sinking until you have dressed for the occasion. There is not time to arrange hair, either.”

She slipped the robe about her and fastened it quickly, fairly having to hold her still, for the woman had no mind to be attired so carelessly.

She was like a child, who, when she saw the inevitable, succumbed and went wildly to some new extreme.

“You are a most cruel girl,” she sobbed hysterically. “Get my pearls at once. I must make sure of them. And my rings, where are they?”

Gail tossed the jewel case to the woman, more to keep her quiet than anything else, while she hastily hunted out a long warm cloak and put it around Mrs. Patton’s shoulders.

“Here is your purse!” She put it in the trembling, little good-for-nothing hand. “Now, we must go up instantly!”

“But my hair!” Mrs. Patton’s hand went to her crimping pins. “And my face is all cold cream! I can’t go this way!”

“Wipe your face on this handkerchief!” Gail thrust a handkerchief into her hand and pushed her toward the door.

“Hurry!”

But the woman held back, her face blanched with fear, dreading what she might see on deck.

The strong young girl finally had to pick up the little pampered woman and carry her up on deck, staggering under the trailing robes and hindered by the frantic attempts of her charge to get away from her.

Once on deck, Mrs. Patton forgot her bristling crimping pins and her besmeared face and took to her lifelong occupation of getting the very best that was to be had for herself.

On deck all was confusion; nobody paid the slightest attention to her. No matter what she had worn, no one would have noticed. For the first time in her life, she forgot appearances and began to look out for self-preservation.

Gail dropped her into a vacant steamer chair that had slid as far as it could when the deck slanted and then been stopped by a pile of life preservers that had been thrown down in a heap. But Mrs. Patton did not remain idly on a steamer chair. She was up and away in her bedroom slippers with the agility of a bird, and when Gail turned back from looking this way and that to reconnoiter, her companion had disappeared. In dismay she looked around for her and caught sight of her flying down the deck toward a group of people where a boat had been lowered over the side. She saw her break wildly through the crowd into their midst, and when she pursued her, she reached the place just in time to see her scrambling up on the deck sail. “Oh, Mrs. Patton!” she cried, but there was a look of cunning in the little, old eyes, the kind of look a miser has when his gold is endangered. Her life was her gold, and she hoarded it carefully. Before Gail could reach her, or before anyone else noticed what she was doing, the woman was over the side, falling wildly into the midst of the already overcrowded boat.

For a woman as frail and dependent as she had been, she righted herself from the fall with extraordinary agility and perched like a magpie in the lap of a great gouty gentleman. She looked triumphantly up at her late companion and called out musically in her most dulcet tone with which she was wont to beguile those whom she had just bulldozed: “Miss Desmond! Miss Desmond! You’ll have to come in the next boat. There really isn’t room for any more here to be comfortable!”

The words floated up to Gail amid a chorus of profanity from sailors and others in the overcrowded boat, but Mrs. Patton sat serenely in her cream and crimping pins like a chief in his paint and feathers and ignored it.

“I wish you’d try to save my gray satin slippers if you get a chance,” she called back in the same tone she would have used if she were starting out on an automobile ride. Then a great wave lifted the little boat, and the childish creature clasped her hands over her eyes and let forth another of her terrible screams.

Gail watched her for a breathless second and then turned back, half feeling a responsibility for the foolish little gray slippers upon her. But a sailor pushed her roughly.

“Boat over there just starting, miss,” he called as he rolled away. “Better hustle! Ain’t got no time to lose. This here boat’s due to sink in about a minute more.”

Gail flew up the slippery inclined deck, catching at the railing as she went, going in the direction the sailor had pointed. Someone tossed her a life preserver and shouted to her to put it on, and she tried to adjust it as she went, thinking as she did so of the stories she had read of life preservers and the people who stuck them full of pins so that they were useless when the time of need came. Her father had used something like that to illustrate unpreparedness for death in one of his sermons in those long-ago, dear days when he and her mother were living in the quiet little parsonage and she was going to college. Blessed Father and Mother, gone two years from earth, yet missed as sorely as at first. They were at least spared the horror of this. They would not be on earth to read the papers tomorrow morning and know that the boat on which their beloved daughter sailed had gone down some miles off the coast. They would not be there to watch anxiously for news of her, to weep if she were lost, or wait for days and weeks and maybe months and still be wrenched by hope and fear.

Preparedness! She was prepared to go if it was God’s will. Life had been none too easy a place for her since her home had been broken up. She would have few to leave now, and had she not often felt the longing of a lonely Christian for home and heaven and the satisfaction of being face-to-face with Christ? To her, death meant no more dark horror than the mere physical passing. She had long ago set her house in order and felt that dying would be going home to God. Still, there was the natural instinct of youth for self-preservation. All these thoughts flashed through her mind as she hurried up the deck, struggling into that life preserver and wondering why she was not tremendously frightened. Her main emotion seemed to be one of disgust for the selfish little creature who had attended so thoroughly to her own affairs. It seemed to her she would rather drown than make such a miserable spectacle of her own littleness.

She was not actually thinking but merely being aware, as with a lightning glance, of certain facts. Her mind was really busy wondering what she ought to do. The gray slippers, as they should, had dropped away with a clear vision of the danger.

The deck seemed to be strangely vacant all at once where a moment before had been clamor and confusion. Only one man was standing where the group toward which she was hurrying had stood. He seemed to be hesitating, shaking his head and waving toward the boat below as if telling them to go and leave him; but at the last moment, just as she reached his side, he evidently was persuaded. He was climbing over the rail as she came up.

As he saw her, he stopped with an exclamation of horror that she was left behind and springing back, shouted below, “Wait, here’s a woman!”

Already there was noise and confusion. “Too late!” she heard someone call, and “Look! The ship! She’s sinking!” And even while they spoke, she felt a sensation as if the earth was about to sink beneath her.

The first feeling of panic seized her then, but she shut her lips and gave mute appeal to the man with her eyes.

He was a big man, with strong, well-cut features and responsible eyes. His attire of sleeveless undershirt and trousers was too indiscriminate to place him socially, and when a ship is sinking beneath one’s feet, one does not stop to appraise one’s only visible companion.

“What ought I to do?” She asked it calmly, though her heart was beating wildly. It had come to her that this was the last minute before something dreadful was going to happen.

“Get in that boat down there, quick!”

He turned and motioned down below, but as they turned, they both saw at once that the sailors were pulling out from below and were making frantic efforts to get away from the vicinity of the sinking ship. A green churning spot in their wake suggested a hidden monster sucking them down to horrid depths.

The man’s breath caught in a smothered exclamation.

“Wait!” he said and strode across the deck to where an ax lay. With quick, strong strokes he tore up a hatchway and, seizing a coil of rope that lay at hand, caught the girl and began lashing her to the improvised raft.

“Oh, what are you going to do?” she murmured, but her words were like gasps. She began to think she knew what dying was like. And yet, she took time to be glad she was not alone. It would have been awful to go down alone with a sinking ship.

The next few seconds were ever afterward confused in her mind. The rope, the raft, the smothered choke of the water, the realization that she was out away from the ship and was yet alive. Frantically she put out her arms to grasp at something, but there was nothing but the slippery raft and the rope that bound her. If the rope would give way, she would be washed into the sea like an insect, so wildly the flimsy foundation under her was tossed to and fro.

It was several seconds before she remembered her companion. Where was he? What would become of him?

Then she saw him dive from the rail into the sea as the dying ship gave a sudden lurch and groan and disappeared from view.

Chapter 2

Gail thought the man had gone with the ship, for something appeared to strike his head as he went down, and then the water closed over him. Her crazy raft tilted the other way, and a wall of angry green foam rose threateningly above her head till she could see nothing else. The sinking ship, or the monster that controlled it, kept sucking, sucking, and the waves above kept towering, till it seemed as if they were contending between them which should rend her or submerge her, the waves or the depths. It seemed a long time before the commotion of the sea subsided, and when she could look again, she thought she saw the man’s head floating with drifting spars and deck chairs and bobbing life preservers. One of these she caught as it floated close to her. It seemed good just to get hold of something, to touch it and feel there was something else besides herself and that raft. She was becoming overwhelmed with her loneliness in the sea. She strained her eyes and tried to twist her body as her raft turned to see if the man were anywhere near. Then all at once his body seemed to be hurled at her from a mountain of green water, his dark hair floating like short seaweed. His eyes were closed. She could not make out if he was conscious.

As she had reached frantically for the life preserver, so now she reached out again and caught him by the hair and held him. So weak she seemed against that mighty force of water that was dragging him away from her. Yet it flashed upon her that she must hold him, must save him in spite of waves and death! He had given up his chance in the boat to save her. She owed him a life. If life was still in him, she must save him. He had been struck. He could not save himself.

The thought seemed to lend force to her grasp, to infuse her with new strength. She sat up as far as her rope would allow and grasped with the other hand, pulling him nearer until his head was on the ledge of the raft. Then she pulled at the neck of the light undershirt, but it was thin and tore. She must get hold of his shoulders. She must somehow lift him onto the raft with her. If it was not strong enough for two, at least she would share it with him while it lasted. They would go down together.

She pulled harder, and then she rested. One arm was lying across her lap now. It seemed lifeless and slippery and cold. The great knotted muscles that must belong to an athlete were like so much inanimate iron. How could she hold him? Yet she must.

The second life preserver that she had caught! Could she get it around him? Wouldn’t that make it easier to lift him? She had tied it by the strings about the rope, and now, holding her silent companion with one arm about his head and shoulders, she reached backward with the other hand to unknot the string. Her face was tense and strained. Her breath came hard, her position was unbearable. The blinding spray dashed wildly in her face at intervals, and the knots seemed welded of steel so soaked they were with salt water. Her fingers were cold and trembled. They stumbled and were clumsy. Her sodden nails turned back from her soft fingers, yet she stubbornly persisted and at last succeeded in untying the knot, cautiously holding the ends with her fingers, lest the jealous sea should snatch her precious prey.

Somehow she managed to tie that cork jacket about the lifeless man, pulling the knots with her teeth and easing her aching arms by clasping them round his slippery shoulders.

When the knots were tied securely, she dropped back and closed her eyes to rest. She realized that a greater effort yet must be hers if she would save the man. She held him as easily as she could to give her muscles rest, then struggled up and began once more to pull and turn and try to lift him onto the raft. At last a great wave lifted him and would have washed him quite away beyond her reach but that she put forth all her strength and drew him to her until he lay across her feet, his head thrown back where she could touch his face, one arm across her lap where she could hold him quite easily by a light grasp. Yet he had not moved nor seemed to know. Perhaps, after all, he was dead.

If only she could loosen the rope that he had bound around her, but he had drawn the knots tightly, and the water had swollen them. She could not get them loose. They would not move any more than if they were carved of wood. But she must fasten him somehow, as soon as possible. Her arms were so numb and her fingers so weak that any moment a vagrant wave might dash him from her, and she could not bear that so long as there was a spark of hope that he might be alive.

She tried to think if there was anything she wore that she could use to fasten him, but of the few garments that she had thrown on so hastily, none were suitable for such a use.

She felt in the pocket of her big steamer cloak that she had snatched as she hurried from the stateroom. Joy! There was her long scarf that she had used to throw around her head while on deck. It was of silk, long and wide and strong, though soft and pliable enough to be folded into the ample pocket of the cloak. Quickly she snatched it out and looped it around his waist, no easy task in her strained position, tying it firmly to the rope that lashed her to the raft.

Then, leaning over, she slipped her hand over his heart and held her breath. It was beating faintly. She could surely feel the soft thuds, or was that the beating of the waves beneath her?

She had to lie back again and rest, for the exertion had been very great, and she felt giddy. Her tired eyelids drooped a moment, then she opened her eyes wide and looked about. The big waves towered above her on every side. Did it take as much water as that to make those curving blue ripples that one watched from the boardwalk at a summer resort? How mighty was creation!

She turned hungrily to the inanimate form by her side. If he would only wake and keep her company in the awful wideness of the sea! She leaned toward him again. If only she could know he was alive! She knew so little about death. What was the test she had heard of once? Oh, a mirror held before the lips! The sea had no mirror. But she bent her face till her cheek was near his nostrils. Was it fancy only, or did she feel a slight breath? Ah, how could she tell when the waves rose and fell with wide tossing and loud roar, now and again washing over their raft and wetting them completely?

She shivered even with her heavy clothing. The wind seemed to search through her, and her flesh was like ice. What must it be for the man in his thin clothing if he was yet alive?

With infinite pains she tugged at the cloak until she had drawn one side of it out from under the confining ropes. Then she pulled it over her companion and crept as close to him as she could. It seemed warmer and less frightful so. She had a dazed feeling that her senses were slipping from her. She had never fainted in her life, but she thought it might be so that oblivion came. She sank back exhausted. The next wave that towered and broke and washed over them seemed to wash her life away, and blissful oblivion came upon her.

When she awoke again, it was night and the stars were shining in a heaven infinitely farther away than the sky she had known all her life. The waves about her seemed to have caught some fallen stars and to be toying with them, tossing them back and forth from one to another as a miser plays with ill-gotten gold. Both the stars and their reflection were cold and indifferent, like haughty things that did not see distress.

Strange fancies filled her brain at first. The water still on every side was the first fact that crept into her waking consciousness, and next that she was yet alive. Gradually she roused her stiffened body and reached out a hand to touch her companion. He was still there, and the arm next to her seemed warm at least, it was warmer than she felt. A great hope sprang up within her. Perhaps he really lived, for until now it had not crossed her thoughts how terrible it would be to be lashed to a raft on the open sea with a dead man!

If he lived, what was there that she could do to help him back to consciousness? Nothing, unless she might help to shelter him from the terrible wind that had arisen during the night. She shivered and drew his head into her arms. It seemed as though there was warmth there. She almost thought she felt his lips move as she passed her hand over his face in the starlight. A frenzy of desire to bring him back to life again seized her. She drew him closer and tried like a mother to shelter him close. She even laid her own cold cheek against his and was surprised to find that where his face had been sheltered it was warmer than her own.

If he lived, how long could he hold out against the blast and the cold and the hunger?

She looked up to the sky to see if she could judge how far the night was on its way and found to her horror that the stars had been blotted out in that brief few minutes. Some drops fell on her upturned face. A new trouble faced them. A storm was on its way!

As if he were a child, she drew her silent companion closer into her arms, tenderly drawing the cloak over his arms, sitting up painfully that she might hold him closer. A fierce spirit of protection entered her. This man had given his life to try to save her. What little fragment of that life still remained was hers to protect while he could not protect himself.

Suddenly, a light flashed out across the water! A long, keen, wide ray that searched and quivered and was gone. It seemed to go over their heads from tip to tip of two waves, and they were hidden in the hollow of its shadow underneath. She crouched and clutched the cloak closer round her charge.

The light flashed again after what seemed an age of time, and then again; and after a time she began to understand that it must be one of those revolving lighthouses on the coast. She had watched them often from a sheltered pavilion where she had sat with her father when they were off together on a vacation. How strange that now such a light was her only connection with the world! She had never thought when she watched it idly in her pleasure that she would be in need of it afar on the black water. Would any watchers see the little speck that was their raft tossed like an eggshell on the deep and know that two souls, living or dead, were tossing there?

The waves roared on, and the rain fell faster, and when she looked again, the lighthouse seemed farther away. They had drifted past it, for the light was off to her right now, and it seemed to be much fainter.

So she sat and nursed her silent charge, and after a while she fell asleep again for a time with her head leaning against his, her sheltering arms still about him.

The morning was pale and gray in the sky when she awoke again, and there was a sense of warmth in her arms. When she lifted her head and looked at the face of the man, she thought she saw a slight movement of the lips and nostrils as if he breathed, but when she gently stirred him he made no sign, except that his head fell lower down upon her arm and settled softly there as if it were more comfortable.

She drew the cloak over his shoulder again and looked about her. The sky was heavy with clouds, and rain had settled into a slanting, sullen drizzle. But off on the horizon, when the raft was lifted on the top of a wave, she saw a dark line. Could it be that this was the coast? Could it be they might drift near enough to be seen?

Anxiously she watched and then turned to her companion. She was sure now that once or twice his lips moved, but no sound was audible above the pounding of the waves.

As it grew lighter, she could see his face, and something in the expression brought back the capable, responsible, refined look he had given her when first he saw her.

With widening, anxious eyes she watched the horizon, and now she was very sure that dark line meant the land and they were drifting toward it. And then she sat and prayed, prayed as she had never prayed before, that they might somehow get to land and that her companion might open his eyes and live.