A Gentleman of Courage. James Oliver Curwood
and almost she prayed that God would take her and cover her completely with the sea so that Pierre might turn back. For a little her courage left her and she called wildly upon Pierre to return, telling him she was his wife and that the woman on the rock was nothing to him. And then the woman who was fighting for her life seemed to look into the eyes of Josette through the distance that separated them—and Josette held out her arms and cried encouragement to her.
All sound but the roar of water was lost to Pierre. He was swimming now, and a hundred forces dragged at his body, beating him one way and then the other, while with all his strength he fought to keep himself in the right direction. He knew what it meant to be carried beyond the rock into that deadly place which they called the Pit. There he would die. He would be pulled down by the undertows, and a little later, when they were done with him, his body would be thrown up at the foot of the cliff. The thought did not fill him with fear. It gave him strength to know Josette was watching him in this struggle against death, and that she was praying for him—and for the woman on the rock.
Only Josette and the other woman could measure the eternity of time it took him to win the fight. In the last moment a mighty hand seemed to gather him in its palm and sweep him up to the rock, and he found himself clinging to it, facing the woman. She was as white as he had seen Josette. Her eyes were as dark, and there was something in them that was more terrible to look at than fear. Pierre was exhausted. He drew himself up a few inches at a time, trying to smile the encouragement he could not speak. His eyes reached the level of the rock, and he looked over and down—and saw then what it was the woman was holding in the crook of her arm.
It was a little girl, six or seven years old, and forgetting in his amazement the thundering menace of the sea Pierre thought that in all his life he had never seen anything so beautiful as this child. She was not hurt. Her eyes were wide open—great, dark eyes that were velvety pools of terror—and her face, lovely as an angel's, looked at him from a mass of jet-black hair that dripped with water and clung about her neck and shoulders like silken strands of seaweed. It was as if a vision had crept up from the foaming surf to taunt him, a vision of a face he had painted in his dreams and had prayed for and hoped for all through the years of his life, and he dashed the water from his eyes to see more clearly. Then he reached down and drew the child to him and held her fragile, slim little body in his arms. The woman's face changed then. Its fierce resolution died out. She became suddenly limp, and seeing her weakness Pierre caught hold of her so that the surf would not beat her from the rock.
"I will get you ashore," he shouted. "You must not give up! You must hold to the rock!"
He bent his face to the child's.
"And you——"
She lay against his breast. Her eyes were looking up at him steadily, and words choked in Pierre's throat. Those eyes, it seemed to him, were too beautiful for a child's eyes. Her lips were still red. But her face was the color of a white cameo in its frame of wonderful black hair, and the thought came to him again that it was an angel the storm had blown in from the sea.
The woman was drawing herself up beside him. Another wave broke against the rock, smothering them in its surf. Out of it came her voice.
"I am Mona Guyon," she cried, so close that her head touched his shoulder. "This is my baby. Her father—went down—there—beside the rock—a few minutes ago. Take her ashore——"
A roaring flood inundated them. When it was gone Pierre drew in a deep breath.
"You must hold to the rock," he shouted again. "I will come back for you. It will be easy—easy for all of us to get ashore—if you will hold to the rock!"
When the roar of the surf died away for a moment he told the child what to do. She must put her arms round his neck and ride ashore on his back and draw in deep breaths whenever her face was out of the water. They would swim to the shore very quickly, and then he would come back for mother. He even laughed as he told her how safely and quickly it could be done. And then he kissed her; there on the rock Pierre Gourdon kissed the soft little mouth he had prayed for so many years, and bowed his head a moment, asking God to help him. Then he lay flat on his face and drew her into just the right place on his back, and when her arms were round his neck he tied her hands tightly together under his chin with a strip which he had torn from his shirt. She could not get away after that. They would go ashore together, one way or the other.
Slowly he lowered himself over the slippery lee of the rock, and again he smiled at Mona Guyon. The hour of his Calvary had come, and his heart beat fiercely with the strength of two praying women as he slipped into the sea with his precious burden. The twisting undercurrents reached out like the tentacles of an octopus and tried to drag him into the doom of the Pit. But it was not Pierre Gourdon alone who was fighting for the right to live. The woman on the rock was fighting for him, and the woman ashore—standing to her waist in the boiling surf—no longer had heart or soul or strength of body, for all had gone to him; and about his neck were the arms of a child that gave to him the courage, not only of those who loved and prayed, but of the good God who had called upon him to play his part in this day and hour.
So he fought, and won at last to the place where his beloved Josette reached out and caught him and helped him to the stony shore, where he sank down weakly, with the child in his arms and her face looking up at him from his breast. He had kept her above the water—that had been the never faltering thought in his mind; and now there seemed to be something of awe, of reverence, of unspoken worship in those strangely beautiful eyes of l'Ange, as Pierre called her in his heart, and suddenly her arms tightened round his neck and with a little cry she kissed him.
Then she was in Josette's arms, and Pierre rose to his feet.
A sudden dread swept over him as he looked out at the rock again. It seemed to him the seas were higher, and the woman was not as he had left her. Her face was down, she was limp, a dark blot without life or resistance, and he saw a huge wave drive up and move her like a sodden chip a little nearer to the edge of the Pit. She was not holding on, as he had prayed God she would! A few more waves like that last one, a taller crest, an angrier thrust from the sea—and she would go.
He turned to Josette. She was on her knees among the sharp stones with her arms about the child, and both she and little Mona were looking up at him, waiting, knowing that only Pierre Gourdon was master of himself and of life and death in this hour. He had never seen such eyes as theirs—Josette's in their agony of fear for him, little Mona's so strangely, gloriously beautiful, saying more to him in their childish terror and entreaty than human lips could have spoken.
"I am going back," he said. "It will be easy this time!"
They heard him above the smashing fury of the Pit, and Pierre, catching an unknown note in his own voice, knew that he was lying. As he faced the beat of the sea he made as if he did not hear Josette calling wildly to him that help would surely come in a few minutes, and he must wait. A few minutes and it would be over, for he could see that with each thrust of the frothing surf over the crest of the rock the woman was a little nearer to death.
It was a harder fight this time. At least it seemed so to Pierre, for the old strength was no longer in his limbs, and something seemed to have gone out of his heart. If he could reach the rock, just reach it and cling to it and hold the woman until Marie Antoinette's message brought the men! That was all he prayed for now, all he hoped for. It was inconceivable for his imagination to go beyond those things—the rock, the woman, a jutting tooth of reef to hang to for their lives. He could feel death all about him as he fought and swam. It struck at him, choked him, blinded him, dragged at his breath until it seemed as if he must give up and go riding with it into the maelstroms of the Pit. It laughed and jeered at him and roared in his ears, but through it all he saw the rock, and at last the same strange current caught him with the force of a gargantuan hand and flung him to it.
He tried to climb up, and slipped back. He tried again and again, and then began to make it, an inch at a time. Something was singing in his ears. It was like the droning hum of the saw in the mill. For a moment he rested. He could not see the top of the rock, but he could see the shore, and there were many figures on it now—men running down to where Josette