Stranded in Arcady by Francis Lynde

  X

  HORRORS

  IT is a trite saying that even the weakest strand in the cable neverknows how much it can pull until the demanding strain comes. As a youngwoman with athletic leanings, Lucetta had had arduous drillings infirst-aid, and had drilled others. If Prime had been merely drowned shewould have known precisely what to do. But the broken head was adifferent matter.

  Nevertheless, when her own exhaustion was a little assuaged, she essayedthe first-aid. Dragging the hapless one a little farther from thewater's edge, she knelt beside him to examine the wound with fingersthat trembled a little as they pressed, in spite of the brave diagnosticresolution. There was no skull fracture, but she had no means ofdetermining how serious the concussion was. Prime was breathing heavily,and the bruise was already beginning to puff up and discolor.

  With hope still in abeyance, she worked swiftly. Warmth was the firstnecessity. Her hands were shaking when she felt in the pocket of Prime'scoat for the precious bottle of matches. Happily it was unbroken, andshe could have wept for joy. There was plenty of fuel at hand, and in afew minutes she had a fire blazing brightly, before which she proppedthe wounded man to dry out, though his wet clothing gave him asweltering steam bath before the desiccating process began. It washeroic treatment, but there was no alternative, and by the time she hadhim measurably dried and warm, her own soggy discomfort was alsoabating.

  Having done what she could, her situation was still as forlorn as itcould well be; she was alone in the heart of the forest wilderness witha wounded man, who might live or die as the chance should befall--andthere was no food. She set her face determinedly against the erosiveimpatience of despair. There was nothing to do but to wait with whatfortitude she could muster.

  The afternoon dragged on interminably, and to make the prospect moredispiriting the sky clouded over and the sun disappeared. Towardevening Prime began to stir restlessly and to mutter in a sort of feebledelirium. The young woman hailed this as a hopeful symptom, and yet themutterings of the unconscious man were inexpressibly terrifying. What ifthe recovery should be only of the body and not of the mind?

  As the dusk began to gather, Lucetta found her strong resolution ebbingin spite of all she could do. The thunder of the near-by cataractdeafened her, and the darkling shadows of the forest were thickly shotwith unnerving suggestions. To add the finishing touch, her mindconstantly reverted to the story of the finding and disposal of the twodead men and she could not drive the thought away. In a short time itbecame a frenzied obsession, and she found herself staring wildly in asort of hypnotic trance at the waterfall, fully expecting to see one orboth of the dead bodies come catapulting over it.

  While it was still light enough to enable her to distinguish thingsdimly, something did come over the fall, a shapeless object about thesize of a human body, shooting clear of the curving water wall, to dropwith a sullen splash into the whirlpool. Lucetta covered her eyes withher hands and shrieked. It was the final straw, and she made sure hersanity was going.

  She was still gasping and trembling when she heard a voice, andventuring to look she saw that Prime was sitting up and holding his headin his hands. The revulsion from mad terror to returning sanity was sosudden and overpowering that she wanted to go to him and fall on herknees and hug him merely because he was a man and alive, and hadn't diedto leave her alone with the frightful horrors.

  "Didn't I--didn't I hear you scream?" he mumbled, twisting his tongue tothe words with the utmost difficulty. And then: "What on earth hashappened to me? I feel--as if--I had been run through--athreshing-machine."

  "You were pitched out of the canoe and hurt," she told him. "I--I wasafraid you were going to die!"

  "Was that why you screamed?" The words were still foolishly hard tofind and still harder to set in order.

  At this she cried out again, and again covered her eyes. "No--no! It isthere yet--in the whirlpool--one of the--one of the dead men!"

  Though Prime was still scarcely more than half conscious of hiscondition and cripplings, the protective instinct was clamoring to beheard, dinning in his ears to make him realize that his companion was awoman, and that her miraculous courage had for some cause reached itsultimate limit. With a brand from the fire for a torch, he crept halfmechanically on hands and knees to the edge of the bowl-like whirlpool.In due time he had a glimpse of a black object circling past in thefroth and spume, and he threw the firebrand at it. A moment later he wassetting the comforting prop of explanation under Lucetta's topplingcourage.

  "It is nothing but a log--just a broken log of wood," he assured her."Forget it, and tell me more about how I came to get this bushel-baskethead of mine. It aches like sin!"

  She described the plunge of the unmanageable canoe over the fall and itsimmediate consequences, minifying her own part in the rescue.

  "You needn't try to wiggle out of it," he said soberly at the end of thebrief recounting. "You saved my life. If you hadn't pulled me out, I'dbe down there in that pool right now, going round and round like thatbally log of wood. What do you charge for saving a man's life, Lucetta?"

  "A promise from the man to be more careful in future. But we mustn'tslide back into the artificial things, Donald. For all you know, mymotive might have been altogether selfish--perhaps it was selfish. Myfirst thought was a screaming horror of being left alone here in thiswilderness. It made me fight, _fight_!"

  "Is that the truth, Lucetta?" he inquired solemnly.

  "Y-yes."

  "All of the truth?"

  "Oh, perhaps not quite all. There is such a thing as the life-savinginstinct, isn't there? Even dogs have it sometimes. Of course Icouldn't very well swim out and leave you to drown."

  "No," he put in definitively, "you couldn't--and what's more, you hadn'tthe first idea of doing such a thing. And that other thing you told mewas only to relieve my sense of obligation. You haven't relieved it--notan ounce. And I don't care to have it relieved. Let it go for the timebeing, and tell me what became of the canoe."

  "I haven't the faintest notion. I didn't see it again after we went overthe fall. Of course it is smashed and ruined and lost, and we areperfectly helpless again."

  For a long minute Prime sat with his throbbing head in his hands, tryingto think connectedly. When he looked up it was to say: "We are in apretty bad box, Lucetta, with the canoe gone and nothing to eat. It ishammering itself into what is left of my brain that we can't afford tosit still and wait for something to turn up. If we push on down river wemay find the canoe or the wreck of it, and there will surely be somelittle salvage. I don't believe the birch-bark would sink, even if itwere full of water."

  "You are not able to push on," she interposed quickly. "As it is, youcan hardly hold your head up."

  "I can do whatever it is needful to do," he declared, unconsciouslygiving her a glimpse of the strong thread in the rather loosely wovenfabric of his character. "I have always been able to do what I had todo. Let's start out at once."

  With a couple of firebrands for torches they set out down the riverbank, following the stream closely and keeping a sharp lookout for thewreck. Before they had gone very far, however, the blinding headache gotin its work, and Prime began to stumble. It was at Lucetta's insistencethat they made another halt and gave up the search for the night.

  "It is no manner of use," she argued. "You are not able to go on; and,besides, we can't see well enough to make sure that we are not passingthe thing we are looking for. We had much better stop right where we areand wait for daylight."

  The halt was made in a small opening in the wood, and the young womanpersuaded Prime to lie down while she gathered the material for anothercamp-fire. Almost as soon as it was kindled Prime dropped off into aheavy sleep. Lucetta provided fuel to last through the night, and thensat down with her back to a tree, determined to stay awake and watchwith the sick man.