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Read Ebook: The Youngest Sister: A Tale of Manitoba by Marchant Bessie Rainey W William Illustrator
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Ebook has 1768 lines and 113928 words, and 36 pages
Illustrator: William Rainey
BY BESSIE MARCHANT
The Youngest Sister
A Tale of Manitoba
BESSIE MARCHANT
BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY
Contents
"SHE HAD REACHED THE BOAT" GRACE MEETS WITH AN ACCIDENT "SHE WAS MAKING NO HEADWAY" "THERE WAS A MAN LYING UNDERNEATH"
The Youngest Sister
BERTHA heard the commotion as she came round the bend, where the road from Paston led out on to the cliffs. It was a very quiet day, although there was a heavy swell on outside, which meant danger to any small craft that got among the rocks. She was very tired, and there was a horrible stitch in her side from walking so fast. But she was anxious to get home in time to cook supper for Anne, and she had simply raced along the level bit of the road.
Old Jan Saunders, with his wife and the fat German who kept the little store at the bottom of the hill, were standing in an excited group at the edge of the roadway and pointing out to the upstanding rocks called the Shark's Teeth, which showed grim and deadly a few yards out from the shore.
"What is the matter? What is wrong?" she gasped, panting still, and pressing her hand against her side to quiet the pain of the stitch.
"Ach! Ach!" sobbed the fat German, wringing his pudgy hands, while the tears rolled down his cheeks. "It is a man; he is caught on the Shark's Teeth, and he will be drowned."
"Oh, how very, very dreadful!" exclaimed Bertha, turning pale, and wishing that she had gone the other way, although it was so much longer, and she would certainly not have been home in time to get the supper ready.
"We haven't got a boat," piped old Jan in his thin, wavering voice. "Nowt but a rope. Our Mestlebury fleet went out on the morning tide, there ain't a boat nearer than Paston, and with such a sea it would take four hours to row round."
"He'll be drowned afoor then, poor chap, he will; for the tide is flowing in fast, and his boat won't lift more than another foot!" cried Mrs. Saunders, who was weeping like the German.
Bertha turned sick and faint. If only, only she had gone the other way, instead of stumbling on a scene like this! Suddenly old Jan turned upon her with an almost fierce expression on his kindly old face. "You can swim, missie. Tak' a roop oot to that poor chap yonder, and we will tow you back safe enough, boat and all."
"Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid!" she cried, covering her face with her hands to shut out the sight of the grey, heaving sea, the little boat wedged in under the rocks, and the man who sat there waiting for death to take him, because he could not swim, and his boat was caught too fast for any effort of his to push it off.
"He will drown! Ah, what a cruel fate it is, and my three boys gone just the same! Dear Lord, when shall it be that the sea will give up its dead?" wailed Mrs. Saunders.
"Ach! Ach! And such a proper man too! Dear Gott in Heaven, don't let him die before our eyes," sobbed the German, sinking on his knees in the roadway with his hands clasped in supplication.
"I will run for Anne; she can swim, and she is so brave!" cried Bertha, whose breath was coming in lumpy gasps of excitement.
"No use at all; he would be drowned before school-marm could get here, if she ran every step of the way," said old Jan hoarsely. "See, the boat bumped that time, and he got a nasty knock, poor chap! It is your chance, missie, and only yours; and it is a man's life that is hanging on your hands, to save or to throw away."
Bertha felt as if her brain would burst. A man's life to hang on her feeble, incapable hands! And it was the wonder of it that roused her to prompt, decided action.
"Fetch the rope!" she said curtly, as she wrenched off her coat and stooped to the buttons of her boots.
A chill dismay came over her then as her hand touched her heavy serge skirt. It would have to come off, and she had nothing underneath but a grey underskirt patched with green. How her sisters had laughed at those two patches with the contrast of colour! But she had been too indolent to alter them. Yet now she winced as she stood before the three, erect and slim, with those two patches of vivid green upon her knees.
"God speed you, missie!" muttered old Jan, as he knotted the rope about her waist. "Swim east when you start, and the current will drift you right down on the boat."
A man's life on her futile hands!
What was it Hilda had said to Anne only that morning at breakfast when the porridge was burned and the coffee was half-cold? "Bertha is hopeless; she dreams all day, and wastes every atom of her strength in building castles in the air, while we have to work and to bear all the discomforts of her incompetence."
And now she, Bertha, the incompetent one, had to save a man's life or to see him drown!
"Oh, I would rather die myself than see him drown!" she sobbed, and then she took the water with a motion so swift and graceful that the three on the steep, rocky shore gave a wavering cheer of encouragement.
The man in the boat called out something too, but it was a warning to her not to risk her life for him. This she did not hear, however, and would not have heeded if she had.
She was swimming steadily, gliding through the water with quick, curving strokes, which Anne had taught her on the holiday afternoons in summer, when they had gone to bathe from the little strip of sand in front of Seal Cove. Anne held a silver medal for swimming, but Bertha had never even thought of competing.
The water was cold, so cold; for autumn was far advanced. The great storm of yesterday was still leaving its effect upon the sea. Bertha felt the heave and throb of it even in that sheltered little bay, and before she was halfway across to the Shark's Teeth she knew that it would be an awful struggle to get there. But now there was no thought of turning back. If she had to die she must, but she could not--oh, she could not!--fail that man out yonder whose life depended upon her. Panting heavily, she was swimming almost blindly, struggling forward, yet knowing all the time that the drift of the current had her in its grip, and she was powerless to fight against it.
She could not go much farther, she could not. She would have to fail after all, and her sisters would say, "Bertha is always so ineffectual, poor little girl!"
But she did not want to be pitied, she just hated it. She wanted to do something that was worth the doing; so she struggled and struggled, until it seemed to her that she had been in the water for weeks and weeks.
Then suddenly a strong hand gripped at her shoulder and a voice said in her ears, "Downright plucky you are, and you have saved me from an uncommonly tight corner!"
She had reached the boat, and it was the man whom she had come to save who was helping her to scramble on board. She was fearfully exhausted, but that did not matter. What troubled her most was to think of those bright green patches which were absolutely vivid now because of the wet. She had tumbled into the boat anyhow, vigorously helped by the man, who had at least strong arms, even though he could not swim nor yet extricate himself from a plight into which no prudent person should have fallen.
Whew! How cold she was! She was shivering violently, and her teeth were chattering. The man dived under the seat upon which he was sitting and dragged out a coat. "Here, put this on; it may help a little," he said, holding it out so that she might slip her arms into it.
The coat was long and roomy, and Bertha dragged it round her dripping underwear, feeling that it was a comfort unspeakable to have it, and then she sat and watched while the three on the shore tugged at the rope, and the man in the boat used the oar as a lever to do his part in getting out of his tight corner.
How the fat German tugged and strove! A gurgle of irrepressible laughter escaped from Bertha when the boat suddenly gave, and the three on the shore tumbled all in a heap.
"I am glad that you are able to get some amusement out of it," said the man rather curtly, for he too had also fallen with the jerk of the boat and had banged his elbow on the side.
"Please forgive me; I did not mean to make fun, but they did look so comical," murmured Bertha contritely; and the man, who had supposed that she was laughing at him, was instantly mollified.
The boat was going through the water now by leaps and jerks. The zeal of the fat German was without discretion, and as he was the strongest of the three, he naturally set the pace.
"Hold, hold; careful there; mind the rocks, or you will upset her!" cried old Jan warningly.
The two in the boat were quite at the mercy of the tow-rope, for the man had broken one oar in trying to lever his boat out from the grip of the Shark's Teeth, and the other had been torn from his hand and lost in that sudden jerk which had upset the three on the shore.
"Oh, the rocks!" cried Bertha, with a gasp of dismay, realizing that unless the towing were very steady, they must be upset when nearing the shore.
Then she thought of Anne, who would be coming home from school to find no supper ready, most likely the fire out, and a general air of discomfort everywhere.
"Oh dear, oh dear, she will think that I did it on purpose!" said Bertha to herself, repressing a sob with difficulty. She had meant so honestly to be all ready for Anne this evening, so it was fearfully disappointing to have failed.
"Mind the rocks! Pull in slowly!" she shouted, reaching out one arm in a roomy coatsleeve, and fending the boat away from a half-submerged rock. But at that moment the German gave a wild tug at the rope, and the boat jerked up against a rock on the other side. The two were pitched violently against each other, and then, before they could sort themselves out at all, they were flung headfirst into the water.
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