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Her speaking eye flashed on them and her slim fingers twisted and untwisted at her back. She lifted her head and with her forefinger traced a pleading circle round her throat. A dark cloud came over Rackby's features. These were the pearls, he knew at once, which Caddie Sills had sold in the interest of Cap'n Dreed so long ago. They were a luckless purchase on the part of the jeweler.
True, the sea had yielded this wild being up, but did she speak with the sea's voice? She had at least the sea's inconstancy, the sea's abandonment. Her words were hot and heavy in little Rackby's heart. Serene harbor master that he was, the unearthly quiet of his harbor was an affront upon him in his present mood.
Let me be your slave, your dog . I am a lost woman if you will not take pity on me." Rackby's heart came into his throat with the slow surge of a sculpin on a hook. "Nothing . Nothing at all. Nothing in the world. I happened along . Just a happen so." The girl stood up, looked at him long and long, cried, "Thank you for nothing, then, Mr.
Crows whirred overhead; their hoarse plaint, with its hint of desolation, made a kind of emptiness in the wood, and he went on, step by step, as in a dream, wrapt, expectant. Was she here? Could Rackby's will detain her here, a presence so swift, mischievous, and aerial? Such a spirit could not be held in the hollow of a man's hand.
And now the clock, obeying its north face, struck eight. Before the last stroke had sounded the girl was made aware of the betraying light. She whirled out of Rackby's arms and ran toward Sam Dreed. The big viking stood with his feet planted well apart, and a mistrustful finger in his beard. "Touch and go!" cried Caddie Sills, falling on his neck. "Do we go at the top of the tide, mister?"
The mother had played him false, as she had Jethro but with Peter these affairs were easier forgotten. Within the week, as he was striding over the bare flats of Pull-an'-be-Damned, he saw the flash of something white inside a weir. The sun was low and dazzled him. He came close and saw that this was Rackby's daughter.
At the approach of storm the shadows stealing forth from that sullen, bowbacked ridge were blue-filmed, like the languid veil which may be seen to hang before blue, tear-dimmed eyes. Deep-water Peter felt from the first that he could not dwell for long on the mysteries of that island without meeting little Rackby's mad challenge. Insensibly he drew near and at last set foot on its shores again.
But even on the seaward side there would not be heard, on such nights, the slightest sound to break the quiet, unless that of little fish jumping playfully in the violet light, and sending out great circles to shimmer toward the horizon. So it drew on toward Day Rackby's eighteenth birthday. One morning in October they set out from Meteor for the village.
Evidently some concession must be made. "Come," he said, turning her face toward him with a tremulous hand. "I will make you a little gift for your birthday. What shall it be?" She stood still then made the very gesture to her bosom and around her neck, which had already sent Peter scurrying landward. The movement evoked a deadly chill in Rackby's heart.
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