CHAPTER XX.

CONCLUSION.

Taking up my girl's body in my arms, I stumbled over the

wreck-encumbered deck, and bore it to the state-room she had occupied on

the outward voyage. Percival was too busy attending to wounded sailors

to be interrupted. His services, I knew, were useless now, but I wanted

him to refute or corroborate a conviction which my own medical knowledge

had forced upon me. The thought was so repellent, I clung to any hope

which might lead to its dispersion. I waited alone with my dead.

Percival came after an hour, which seemed to me an eternity. He

stammered out some incoherent words of sympathy as soon as he looked in

my face. But this was not the purpose for which I had detached him from

his pressing duties elsewhere. I made a gesture towards the dead girl.

He attended to it immediately. I watched closely and took care that the

light should be on his face, so that I might read his eyes rather than

listen to his words.

"She has fainted!" he exclaimed, as he approached the rigid figure. I

said nothing until he turned and faced me. Then I read his eyes. He said

slowly: "You are aware, Marcel, that--that she is dead?"

"I am."

"That she has been dead--several hours?"

"I am."

"But let me think. It was only an hour--"

"No; do not think," I interrupted. "There are things in this voyage

which will not bear to be thought of. I thank you for coming so soon.

You will forgive me for troubling you when you have so much to do

elsewhere. And now leave us alone. I mean, leave me alone."

He pressed my hand, and went away without a word. I am that man's

friend.

They buried her at sea.

I was happily unconscious at the time, and so was spared that scene.

Edith Metford, weak and suffering as she was, went through it all. She

has told me nothing about it, save that it was done. More than that I

could not bear. And I have borne much.

The voyage home was a dreary episode. There is little more to tell, and

it must be told quickly. Percival was kind, but it distressed me to find

that he now plainly regarded me as weak-minded from the stress of my

trouble. Once, in the extremity of my misery, I began a relation of my

adventures to him, for I wanted his help. The look upon his face was

enough for me. I did not make the same mistake again.

To Anderson I made amends for my extravagant display of temper. He

received me more kindly than I expected. I no longer thought of the

money that had passed between us. And, to do him tardy justice, I do not

think he thought of it either. At least he did not offer any of it back.

His scruples, I presume, were conscientious. Indeed, I was no longer

worth a man's enmity. Sympathy was now the only indignity that could be

put upon me. And Anderson did not trespass in that direction. My misery

was, I thought, complete. One note must still be struck in that long

discord of despair.

We were steaming along the southern coast of Java. For many hours the

rugged cliffs and giant rocks which fence the island against the

onslaught of the Indian Ocean had passed before us as in review, and

we--Edith Metford and I--sat on the deck silently, with many thoughts in

common, but without the interchange of a spoken word. The stern,

forbidding aspect of that iron coast increased the gloom which had

settled on my brain. Its ramparts of lonely sea-drenched crags depressed

me below the mental zero that was now habitual with me. The sun went

down in a red glare, which moved me not. The short twilight passed

quickly, but I noticed nothing. Then night came. The restless sea

disappeared in darkness. The grand march past of the silent stars began.

But I neither knew nor cared.

A soft whisper stirred me.

"Arthur, for God's sake rouse yourself! You are brooding a great deal

too much. It will destroy you."

Listlessly I put my hand in hers, and clasped her fingers gently.

"Bear with me!" I pleaded.

"I will bear with you for ever. But you must fight on. You have not won

yet."

"No, nor ever shall. I have fought my last fight. The victory may go to

whosoever desires it."

On this she wept. I could not bear that she should suffer from my

misery, and so, guarding carefully her injured arm, I drew her close to

me. And then, out of the darkness of the night, far over the solitude of

the sea, there came to us the sound of a voice. That voice was a woman's

wail. The girl beside me shuddered and drew back. I did not ask her if

she had heard. I knew she had heard.

We arose and stood apart without any explanation. From that moment a

caress would have been a sacrilege. I did not hear that weird sound

again, nor aught else for an hour or more save the bursting of the

breakers on the crags of Java.

I kept no record of the commonplaces of our voyage thereafter. It only

remains for me to say that I arrived in England broken in health and

bankrupt in fortune. Brande left no money. His formula for the

transmutation of metals is unintelligible to me. I can make no use of

it.

Edith Metford remains my friend. To part utterly after what we have

undergone together is beyond our strength. But between us there is a

nameless shadow, reminiscent of that awful night in the Arafura Sea,

when death came very near to us. And in my ears there is always the echo

of that voice which I heard by the shores of Java when the misty

borderland between life and death seemed clear.

My story is told. I cannot prove its truth, for there is much in it to

which I am the only living witness. I cannot prove whether Herbert

Brande was a scientific magician possessed of _all_ the powers he

claimed, or merely a mad physicist in charge of a new and terrible

explosive; nor whether Edward Grey ever started for Labrador. The

burthen of the proof of this last must be borne by others--unless it be

left to Grey himself to show whether my evidence is false or true. If

it be left to him, a few years will decide the issue.

I am content to wait.

THE END.

LONDON: DIGBY, LONG AND CO., PUBLISHERS, 18 BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET

STREET, E.C.

ROBERT CROMIE'S BOOKS

_OPINIONS OF THE PRESS_

A PLUNGE INTO SPACE

WITH PREFACE BY JULES VERNE

_Times._--The story is written with considerable liveliness, the

scientific jargon is sufficiently perplexing, and the characters are

sketched with some humour.

_Chronicle._--A strange, weird, mysterious story that holds the reader

spell-bound, from the first page to the last.

_Athenaeum._--Mr. Cromie's Utopia is charming, and the quasi-scientific

detail of the expedition is given with so much integrity that we hardly

wonder at the marvellous results accomplished.

_Truth._--A very clever description of a flight through space to Mars

... the book is extremely interesting and suggestive; especially,

perhaps, where it attacks the theories of Mr. George and "Looking

Backwards."

_Court Journal._--Mr. Robert Cromie's remarkably clever and entertaining