Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 2 (1925-02).djvu/120

 Renwick was baffled. It appeared hopeless. But he laid his plans for his last resort with a steady mind. Marian must be spared at every cost. He broached to her the possibility of his reaching the sunken hull by swimming.

He said nothing of the sharks, nothing of his conversation with the islander. He opened up the subject tentatively, delicately, with every resource of his strained finesse. He set her mind easily at rest about his going by harping upon the gentleness and kindly hospitality of the islanders. She would not mind remaining alone with them for a while?

Marian acquiesced easily, admiring her man's accustomed resource. Of course he might go out there if he wished! Why not? But he must not stay too long. He must come back soon—soon! He took her in his arms.

Four days later, as he awoke, he found that Marian was looking, smilingly, into his face. She had been shaking him. It was at least an hour after their usual time for rising. Then he knew that it was beginning.

Almost at once he told Marian of his intention to swim out to the spar that afternoon. Of course she knew he was a wonderful swimmer! Wouldn't it be rather far, though? Her attention was diverted by the approach of an amber-colored baby, who waddled toward her, soft little murmurings on its lips, its tiny hands laden with hibiscus blooms.

She went with him down to the beach, his body glistening with coconut oil, a great coconut knife hanging by a lanyard about his neck. She waved to him when he stopped to tread water, turning about and shouting: "Good-bye." She could just hear his voice faintly because of the distant roar of the surf, a roar which rolled in for miles, even from the farthest breakers where a lone spar still hung aslant across the line of the horizon.

Then he swam straight out toward the spar where shadowy, black fins moved stealthily upon the mirror surface of the Pacific.

NCE alone in the deep water, he settled himself to a steady, distance-devouring stroke. He had put everything in his past life definitely behind him. That now held for him, he knew, nothing that it was not altogether best to abandon. He would accomplish two ends in one, by failing to return. He would avoid the frightful process of disintegration and (infinitely nearer to his soul's desire) he would thus spare Marian all that concentrated horror which had so fearfully affected the lives of his parents. He was doing her, he reasoned, moreover, no wrong in depriving her of himself. He was only forcing the exchange between a horrible and long-drawn-out deprivation, and this sudden one which by comparison was merciful and kind.

His purpose was clear and definite. He would swim straight out to where the sea wolves moved restlessly back and forth about the wreck, and kill and rend with his great knife until he was overcome. It was not even suicide! There was a possibility that the sharks might not attack him, but would disappear upon his arrival. He knew, fragmentarily, something of sharks. One could never be certain what they might do. It was also possible that, even if attacked, the killing of one or two might divert the others: just as in Siberia travelers pursued by wolves sometimes escaped by shooting a wolf or two and so delaying the pack, which would stop to tear and devour.

He swam on steadily, these ideas uppermost in his mind. After what seemed a very long time, he raised