Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [138]
Again he heard Romney’s call. He glimpsed her light, away to leeward. Vaguely he smiled, murmured a goodbye and with supreme abandon yielded himself to the engulfing sea.
VII
THE shock of a hard body in collision with his shoulder jarred him awake from this mood of euthanasia. Instinct flung out his arms. His clutching hands caught something, slipped, held, and once more wrenched loose; then finally got their grip and clung there.
He sensed he was no longer sinking, was not dead, might still survive. The ripe moonlight on that southern sea showed his reopening eyes that he was grappling the netted side of a monoplane life-raft-a raft that must have fallen from the Imperatrice rather than have been launched, for in that swift, all-mastering panic not a single one had been set free.
Life and the instinct to live gushed up in Norford Hale. Many long years still stood between him and his natural term of being; the blood still rushed hot and keen through his arteries. And “Life!” Cried every atom of him, in clamant choruses. He found that the struggle he had thought ended had only just begun.
With freshened energy he toiled up out of the welter and the foam, out upon the swaying safety of that float. One by one he undid the hampering buckles of the now water-logged life-belt, and saving only the paddle and the food-cartridges slid the useless apparatus back into the sea. Still sucking air and brine, it sank, eddying in the moonshine down and away to black deeps.
As it disappeared, hopes welled up in Norford Hale, and burning thoughts, and eager yearnings after supreme possibilities that set his pulses hammering. He stood up then, filled his domed chest with splendidly revivifying breath, and through hollowed palms belled into a long cry to Jeanne, across the night.
He listened, in suspense, searching the loom for her light, but seeing none. A sick fear crept upon him as he called and called again.
Her answer! He heard it, all at once, drifting down-wind to him. All at once her light showed once more, a star upon the vast waters.
Joy so poignant as his was almost pain, as he knelt, plunged the paddle overside, and with splendid energy began driving the raft toward Jeanne.
After a certain while, two figures sat together on the raft that cradled easily over the vast Pacific rollers. Millions of moving sparkles flashed from the sea, struck out by the moon — the moon now disked in solid silver, now “stooping through a fleecy cloud” and shining there with softened glory.
Night wore on; and now the moon, dimming as the east began to glow, hid drooped almost to the vague mists that pearled the horizon. The stars blanched and died; but, watching them, the man saw one star moving on the edge of the sea — a star that waxed, that mounted on the sky — a star that spoke of life.
“Look In cried Norford, pointing. “A kinetogram was sent, after all! See there — rescue!”
The girl, all disheveled, wet and shivering, raised her eyes to the swift-approaching searchlight of the aerocraft. For a moment she peered at it in silence; then she smiled.
“Can this be A.D. 2O16?” She asked wonderingly. “Things like this happen only in books — books of the old days — ”
“Books of life!” Said Norford, with his arm about her. “Don’t you see — this plunge has been a plunge back into life, real life, for us? Romney mine, a story like this can have only one ending! And was it you, Romney, was it you, who told me that Romance was dead?”
She bowed her head, yearning against his breast. His arms made home for her.
“I told you that,” she faltered, “before I knew what a man could be — before either of us had drunk the wine of primitive emotion — before I owed you the life that’s yours now, if you want it!”
He slid the eagle ring from his finger.
“Give me your left hand, Romney,” he bade. “The air has made us one; the symbol of these wings shall always bind us!”
Her answer was to kiss the ring that he had put upon her finger. Kisses and tears, together, sanctified it.
“You would have died that I might