Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/241

Rh to him she must speak it over and over again—"Eric, Eric, Eric. But I knew you must be alive. I believe if every one else failed I must find you. So I came."

"And I knew you had come when they told me," he confessed; "really I knew it was so. For I knew—you!"

So they brought him to their shelters. As they took him in and as he met McNeal and Linn, for the first time he sensed that disaster had happened.

"Why, Jerry, what's happened? Old fellow, you've—why, you—what's happened?" he appealed. "Why, you're all here!" he realised; "Linn, you and McNeal." He named over the others. "Koehler, where's the ship? Whom have you left on the ship?"

The doctor, unable to put off the news longer, met him. "There's no one on the ship, Eric."

"You mean"

Koehler still hesitated; then Margaret, as though that were nothing now that she had found Eric told him.

"The ship's burned."