Coral Sands/Chapter 23

AKOFF, standing above the body of the man he had tripped and strangled, drew his sleeve across his forehead.

Well, that was done, without fuss or bother. That trick he had learned at Hakodate was hard to beat, and the fool had only himself to thank. Let him split now if he could.

He looked around him. He could not see Fernand because Fernand had cast himself down by the tree under which he had been standing. He could see nothing but the trees and a hint of the village beyond them, the reef, the moonlit sea.

Then, bending, he seized the body of Chales by the heels and began to drag it across the rough coral to a great reef pool twenty or thirty yards away to the west.

Around this pool, newly uncovered by the tide, the coral lay fairly flat, and here near the pool edge he straightened himself for a moment, wiped his forehead again with his coat sleeve and turned to look for some loose rocks to weight the body with.

He saw a man—a man coming toward him across the coral, a man moving swiftly.

Yakoff's fingers spread open and his flesh crawled on his bones. He turned as if to run and found himself facing the pool.

The vast, deep pool leading to caverns in the under coral seemed of a sudden to be boiling. He turned to dash along its side when, just as Chales had been tripped, he was tripped and fell.

Something had got a purchase on his right ankle. He knew and, screaming, he clung to a projection of the coral while the something got a purchase on his knee and left foot.

Fernand saw it all, and everything was wiped from his mind but the sight before him.

He saw in the boiling pool the balloonlike form of the great squid whose black, snakelike tentacles were rushing and rippling over the coral, making a purchase here, seeking one there preparatory to the great haul on the trapped man.

Without a moment's thought he flung himself on Yakoff to drag him back, an act as mad as the act of a man flinging himself into a furnace to save another.

He had a shark knife in each pocket but no time to seize or use one. He clung, and as he clung he felt Yakoff's hold torn from the coral as a tooth is torn from a jaw.

He cast himself sidewise; he was free. Yakoff's outflung clutching hand had come on the leg of Chales' body, and seized it just as the great twitch came that carried the murderer clinging to the murdered into the grip of the mechanism now sunk from sight beneath the heaving water.

The pool lipped and coughed and sighed, and died to ripples that turned to a mirror reflecting the moon.

On board the California the clock of the smoke room pointed to quarter past three. Cyrus had not retired to rest; neither had the girl.

They had been talking.

This tragedy suddenly sprung on them had brought them closer together than they ever had been. Never before had he opened up his life to her, telling her all sorts of details of his past. His early struggles, the hand-to-mouth existence he had led, always driven from post to pillar by want of money till the grand coup came and the phosphates that had saved him and made him.

“And there you are,” said he, “all spoiled not by my own fault, Heaven knows. Though maybe a bit—if I hadn't gone in for gambling I wouldn't have won Leeson's money, and he wouldn't have tried to kill me, and I wouldn't have killed him—but I've paid. Lord knows I've paid. But what's the use of talking? Life seems all accident as far as I can see. A man goes along the street and slips on an orange peel and kills himself or gets smashed in a railway accident through some railway man's fault—and they talk of a Deity looking after things—where is He?”

“Listen,” said the girl.

The anchor watch was hailing some one—a voice came from alongside. Cyrus rose up and went out, and the girl sat waiting, listening.

She heard voices—Fernand's voice—and as she rose to her feet, the door opened and Cyrus came in, followed by Fernand. The young man was pale and he looked ten years older than when she had seen him last, and as he stood before her he had to put his finger tips on the table to steady himself.

“Those men are gone,” said Fernand. “No one will ever see them again. No. I did not kill them. Heaven did.”

He sat down on a chair and Cyrus poured him out some brandy which he drank neat as if it were water. Then he told the whole story.

“You would have done the same,” said he, covering his eyes with his hand. “If you had seen—if you had seen”

Cyrus sat for a moment, looking at the man who had brought him the news that he was saved. The man who had worked for him and done his best and who would have fought for him—only Providence had taken the business into Its own supreme hands.

“Son,” said he, “I can't talk to you now or make you know what I feel. She'll tell you.” He rose and went out, leaving them together, and, crossing the deck, stood with his hands on the rail, looking across at the sleeping village, and the long, white beach.

A world of phantasy where no sign of life or sound was but the never-ceasing sound of the breakers—a voice that came to Cyrus as that of the living God who slumbers not nor sleeps.