CHAPTER XXV

THE PRICE OF HEROISM

'Liphalet Truitt lifted the latch of Suz Montevedo's door, and a groan was the response to his first hail.

"By Hannah! you're darker'n the inside of a nigger's pocket here," he said. "How ye doin', Suz?"

"Bad, Mist' Life! Oh, so ver' bad!" moaned the Portuguese, who was a good deal of a child in time of sickness.

"And all alone?" 'Liphalet's tone was rather shocked.

"Ah, I haf not been alone, Mist' Life. The saints be praised! I haf had an angel veesitor."

'Liphalet was relieved to some degree. He knew he was on the right trail. "Where's this here angel gone?" he asked dryly.

"I know not. Where do angels go when they have made a veesit of mercy, Mist' Life? Do they not return to heaven?" queried the poetical Suz.

The ex-steward was willing to agree that Doctor Ambrose's old-fashioned parlor had often seemed near heaven to him. But he eventually got down to practicalities with Montevedo. Miss Sue had been there for more than an hour. She had tidied up the shack, cooked some food for the man, and left more, with a cooling drink and the doctor's medicine within his reach. She had promised to come again on the morrow, while she hoped to send Washy Gallup to spend the night with him.

"But eef my leetle Loretta was here, she would do for me," moaned Suz.

"That fly-away young'un!" ejaculated 'Liphalet. "She can't do nothin' but dance. Crazy as a sand-piper. She's better off with her father's people and you're better off here without her, Suz."

Montevedo's hands and knees were swollen to twice their natural size, and, like all other persons so afflicted, he could not keep the affected parts quiet. It always seems to the sufferer from inflammatory rheumatism that some other position than that in which the aching member is, would be more comfortable. The swollen and padded hands and arms of the fisherman aroused 'Liphalet's sympathy; but he had still another question to ask.

"How long since Miss Sue left here, Suz? Seems like I ought to've met her comin' along from Tapp Point, if not t'other side of it."

"She be gone twenty minutes--not more," groaned the sufferer.

"Twenty minutes? Nonsense!" ejaculated 'Liphalet. "I was all that comin' along the cliff. I didn't see nary sign of her."

"Did I not say she was an angel?" cried Montevedo. "Ah, _Dios_! She has been carried home t'rough the storm in a chariot of the saints."

"By Hannah!" ejaculated his visitor, rebuttoning his coat, "she's more likely to have been carried over that bank by the wind, and without no chariot. Twenty minutes ago? Are you sure, Suz?"

"Oh, yes, Mist' Life. Sure as sure," sighed the fisherman. "It seemed she had scarcely closed the door when you opened it."

The other said no further word, and he stood not on the order of his going. He plunged out of the shack into the gale with a stricture about his heart that was positively painful. Twenty minutes before he had been at the beginning of the patrol path, there by the corner of the Tapp estate. Through a rift in the curtain of sleet he had seen faintly that wraith, or figure, staggering for an instant on the verge of the cliff.

Had that ghostly specter of the storm been Sue Ambrose?

Where could she have gone from Suz Montevedo's shack save toward home? Yet he had not met her as he plowed along the patrol path. In the other direction there was no dwelling until one reached the life saving station. And he was sure Miss Sue would not go there. Why should she? Was it a haven she craved, the fisherman's shack under this sheltering bank was sufficient.

Had she started for home, what other way could the doctor's sister have gone save by the path by which 'Liphalet came to Suz Montevedo's hovel? The ex-steward, backed up against the driving sleet, trying to pierce the smother ahead of him with fear-sharpened vision, chewed for that moment a bitter cud of uncertainty.

To the right, across the vacant lots and by an uncertain path, lay Betty Gallup's little cottage. But the "Able Seaman" was at this time of day redding up the rooms behind and above the store on the Shell Road, and her door would be locked. No storm would keep Mrs. Gallup at home, and the doctor's sister must know there would be no refuge for her there.

The path by which she must have come to the shack, was the path by which she must have essayed her return--this along the treacherous verge of the sand cliff. Yet taking the Portuguese fisherman's statement of time with more than the proverbial grain of salt, Miss Sue could not have so quickly reached the one open house along The Beaches--that of the younger Tapps--wherein to find shelter.

The ground, of course, offered no spoor of any character. The force of the wind was driving the snow and sleet so rapidly that nothing stuck to the frozen earth. No footprint of any kind, therefore, was visible.

The fierceness of the wind, so apparent now to 'Liphalet as he leaned back against it, roweled the fear already roused in his heart. With this blast behind her how could Sue Ambrose's frail body have offered resistance?

In coming over from Tapp Point he had noted no fresh break in the bank where any part of the patrol path had been recently carried away. However, as he had declared to Doctor Ambrose, the wind was strong enough to have picked up his sister and swept her bodily over the cliff's verge. This thought, born of the travail of the ex-steward's mind, took hold upon him now with a grip that was not to be shaken off--with a certainty that no optimism could deny. And just now Eliphalet Truitt was in no optimistic mood.

He felt that his suspicion of Sue Ambrose's fate was a certainty. Possibly the moment following that lull in the gale when he was able to see some distance along the patrol path, was the instant she had come to grief. He remembered vividly the spot at which he had seen that wraith of the storm.

Her cry as she was carried over the brink would be smothered in the hullabaloo of the gale. He had passed the place of her catastrophe and had heard nothing to warn him that she had there come to disaster. The breakers were covering the narrow beach with wreckage and all manner of culch. At some points they dashed against the bluff itself and reached ravening hands half way up its face.

'Liphalet knew well the lay of the land here, and every contour and wavering line of the cliff. In his mind's eye he saw a picture of that bit of the bluff where he believed the tragedy had taken place.

He whirled suddenly, with a prayer upon his lips, and dashed into the shed adjoining Suz Montevedo's cottage. There upon a wooden peg hung the coil of line he had seen the fisherman purchase at Cap'n Abe's store a week ago, to reeve new halyards on the catboat, _Loretta_.

In the corner stood a heavy crowbar. He flung the coil of rope over his head and one shoulder, hoisted the iron bar to his other shoulder, and thus burdened, staggered out into the storm again. The wind was really an aid to him, for it was at first almost directly at his back. It thrust him on, burden and all, at a furious pace.

But its cant was toward the edge of the cliff, and he fought away from that. How could Sue have kept her feet against such a tempest? It was a mystery. 'Liphalet Truitt groaned again. Her frail body might even now be tossing in the breakers against the shelving face of the high bank, from the brow of which he tried at every few rods to peer down into the tumbling, boiling sea.

He arrived at the spot where he believed the doctor's sister had come to grief. The snow and wind were both increasing in intensity. He could see nothing at a distance of two yards. Nevertheless, he was assured of his position. Here was where he had seen that mysterious spectral figure in the storm.

He stepped back at least two fathoms from the patrol path and drove the point of the bar into the frozen earth. Again and again he thrust it downward, with his weight behind each blow, until finally he could work it around and around, sinking it into the sandy soil for as much as two feet.

The bar could not easily be drawn out, and he looped the end of the line over it. This once secure, he allowed the slack of the line to run free over the verge of the bluff.

He would have shouted in vain. The thunder of the breakers and the howling of the wind made a pandemonium above which no human voice could rise. Had Sue Ambrose been within twenty feet of him, the man could not have made her hear.

Obsessed with the idea that she had been carried over the cliff, he seized the line and lowered himself, hand under hand, down the break of it. His head once below the brink, he was immediately out of the gale's tumult. It roared above him as the sea roared below; but he was in a calm, and having cleared his eyes with the back of one hand, could look about.

His feet had an unstable placement on the face of the pitched bank; but the line gave him confidence. Here, ten feet below the brow of the cliff, the flying spume from the bursting waves stung his cheek. Here and there as his vision cleared he beheld patches of snow clinging to the steep bank. Yonder was something on a narrow shelf that was not snow. A dark figure--a human figure! Its garments fluttered in the suction of the rifted air.

"Sue! My God! Sue!"

His cry was simultaneous with the mighty swing he gave his body, his boots thrust against the crumbling bank. She lay a third of the way down the bluff. The foam from the crests of the breakers saturated her as they tore up the steep ascent. He swung to her side, landing with both boots digging into the frozen sand for a foothold. She was kneeling, her gloved hands clasped in prayer. His coming seemed to her a direct answer to her petition.

[Illustration: He swung to her side, landed with both boots digging into the frozen sand for a foothold.]

"'Liphalet! The good Lord has sent you to me!" she gasped, and he read the words on her lips rather than heard them.

"By Hannah! mebbe He did," responded 'Liphalet. "But I hadn't thought on it that way till you said it, Susan. How did you get down here?"

"I--I fell."

"I thought likely," was his grim response. "And now we're goin' to have somethin' of a time to scramble up again."

"Is there nobody to help us, 'Liphalet?"

"Ain't a soul stirring this weather. All sensible folks is to home," was his mild criticism of her conduct in venturing forth. "Even the station crew won't go on patrol before four o'clock. Ev'rybody but us is as snug as hermit crabs.

"But don't ye lose heart, Sue," he added cheerfully. "I'll git ye out o' this all right."

"I don't doubt it, 'Liphalet," she returned, clinging to his arm with both hands and gazing expectantly into his face.

The ex-steward was seriously tempted. The peril of their position sloughed away from his mind for the moment. He gazed down into her uplifted face and believed he saw there a response to his unspoken desire.

And then there swept over him, like the curtain of snow and sleet that had buffeted him on the brow of the cliff, the chilling thought of that forty thousand dollars! That fortune which she had hoarded--of which she had evidently spent so little during these ten bitter years--parted them. He could not bring himself into the appearance of being a fortune hunter.

He wished with all his heart and soul Sue Ambrose's money had fallen with her down the face of the cliff. He would cut it loose and save her for himself--letting the raging sea take toll of her hateful wealth!

Already he was knotting the line under her arms in true reefer fashion. He showed her by gesture as well as word of mouth, how to cling to him as he climbed--actually setting her pickaback across his loins--so that he might have both hands free.

Miss Sue, though of almost childish figure, was no weakling. As for 'Liphalet, he silently thanked the Almighty his years of active life at sea had toughened his muscles and sinews and steadied his mind against times of stress. With his boots thrust against the broken, frosted bank, he pulled himself and his burden upward by the sheer strength of his arms, working his way hand above hand along the rope.

Nor was the attempt without a certain heart-sickening peril. The shale rattled from under his boots wherever he set them. The whole face of the sand cliff was, at this point it seemed, as loose as ashes. Suppose that bar, thrust into the earth above, should loosen! It might pull out at any moment and cast them both into the ravening flood.

Even as Eliphalet Truitt thought of this horrid possibility, a great sea rose below them, burst, and the wash of it almost sucked them down. Tons upon tons of earth were bitten out of the bank, and he was in actual panic for the moment. Had he not come at the moment he had to Sue's rescue, it would have been too late. The ledge on which she had lain was engulfed.

He climbed on. He could not see Miss Sue's features, but he knew her lips whispered a prayer at his ear.

"And who can gauge the height to which a good woman's prayer ascends?" thought 'Liphalet, and was inspirited by the thought--and pressed on mightily.

His anxious gaze was fixed on the brow of the bank, into which the line had so deeply cut. This upper section of the face of the cliff must have been woefully weakened by the undermining of the sea that had just broken around them. He expected momentarily to see the cliff for yards on either hand topple outward and fall, overwhelming them in an avalanche.

It might be that the driving of the crowbar into the hard soil beyond the patrol path was all that was needed to crack off a huge slice of the cliff's edge. Its barren top had offered nothing upon which the loop of the line could have been fixed. But he felt that he had done his best, whatever came.

Shrieking above them, the wind flung the sleet and snow yards beyond the cliff's edge; therefore they were sheltered until he had climbed to the very brow of the bank. He was almost breathless; he waited a few seconds before essaying the final effort with which to drag himself and his burden out upon the level ground.

It was then that he felt the earth's first tremor. The face of the cliff was actually heaving outward!

The line slipped. He dropped with his burden for a foot or more.

"She's goin'!" was 'Liphalet's gasped ejaculation, and he scrambled desperately upward, determined to make the brink and safety with the woman he loved.