Island Hospital by Elizabeth Houghton Read Free Book Online Page B

something quite outside her experience. They were so vast, so empty of people, and the trees were so tall. She was thankful when the meal was over and she was left alone by the fire. For the very first time she was beginning to wonder whether this adventure might prove rather more than she had bargained for. Memory struck her and slow anger began to stir in her veins as she remembered Alan’s scolding speech. How dare he call her a silly little fool! No one had bothered to warn her that there was any danger in just taking a walk, and he had no right to speak to her like that. He could have explained gently.
    She stood up and walked across to the great window. The flicker of light from the flashing buoy in the outer harbor cut through the darkness, and a few stars dotted the deep blue curtain of the sky. A faint silvery glimmer showed briefly across the water and then brightened swiftly as the moon sailed into sight around the shoulder of the mountain. Sheila sighed a little. Would that moon be shining on English fields soft with early summer? Would it be lighting up the white counterpanes of the ward where she had worked so happily as Staff Nurse?
    A dark object appeared in the silver pathway that led to the moon. Sheila stared at it fixedly and then smiled grimly as she realized it must be Alan’s canoe. She watched the slender craft glide forward and saw the glistening drops dripping from the paddle. Alan was only a dark shape against the silver backdrop. Not even his red hair could compete with the light of the moon. She heard footsteps and turned to see Clare, her green eyes shining like jade as the moonbeams caught them.
    Together they pressed their noses against the window.
    “I wonder where he’s been,” Sheila said dreamily. Her anger had surrendered to the glory of the night.
    Clare shrugged indifferent shoulders. “Probably yarning with some of the fishermen around in Fisherman’s Cove.” She went on to explain. “The fishing boats take shelter there at night, it’s handy for them to go out early in the morning. They can slip through the cut in their rowboats if they want anything from the store.”
    [ Sheila looked blank until she remembered that the “cut” was a shallow channel made by the fishermen through the reefs and the neck of land that jutted out to form the outer harbor.
    Clare was talking again. “I don’t know what he sees in them. They’re a rough lot and most of their boats are pretty squalid. Ugh!” Clare wrinkled her little nose. “To think I used to like fish.”
    A voice from behind startled them. “What a pity! I brought you one for breakfast.”
    Sheila and Clare turned to see a smiling Alan waving a large salmon under their noses.
    “I didn’t know you had a river here,” Sheila observed.
    There was a burst of laughter. “What do you want a river for, Sheila?” Clare and Alan were looking at her with amusement.
    Sheila felt at a loss. “Don’t you catch your salmon in rivers, then?”
    Alan’s voice was full of kindly condescension. “No, we catch Pacific salmon in the sea. They’re not like your Atlantic salmon. We leave the salmon in the rivers for the bears to catch.”
    Sheila felt that this hadn’t been her day. She spent a few minutes in friendly chatter to show she bore no ill will and then said goodnight. Alan and Clare made no attempt to detain her. Sheila noticed that Clare seemed relieved at her departure.
    Sheila went slowly down the corridor. She could detect no difference in the way that Alan spoke to either of them, unless he was more inclined to tease her. Yet Clare seemed to assume a proprietorial manner as soon as Alan was in sight far out of proportion to any gesture he might make. Sheila’s mind went back to what the First Officer had told her, but she had seen little actual proof of any such attachment. In fact the only time she had seen Alan look unhappy was at some action of Clare’s. He didn’t behave like a man in love, but merely as a man