The Trail of 98 by Robert W Service Read Free Book Online Page B

what I'm saying. Look, why don't you!"
    So, to please him, I turned full round and looked. An old man, patriarchal in
aspect, crouched on the deck. Erect by his side, with her hand on his shoulder,
stood a slim figure in black, the figure of a girl. Indifferently my eyes
travelled from her feet to her face. There they rested. I drew a deep breath. I
forgot everything else. Then for the first time I sawBerna.
    I will not try to depict the girl. Pen descriptions are so futile. I will
only say that her face was very pale, and that she had large pathetic grey eyes.
For the rest, her cheeks were woefully pinched and her lips drooped wistfully.
'Twas the face, I thought, of a virgin martyr with a fear-haunted look hard to
forget. All this I saw, but most of all Isaw those great, grey eyes gazing unseeingly over the crowd,
ever so sadly fixed on that far-away East of her dreams and memories.
    "Poor little beggar!"
    Then I cursed myself for a sentimental impressionist and I went below.
Stateroom forty-seven was mine. We three had been separated in the shuffle, and
I knew not who was to be my room-mate. Feeling very downhearted, I stretched
myself on the upper berth, and yielded to a mood of penitential sadness. I heard
the last gang-plank thrown off, the great crowd cheer, the measured throb of the
engines, yet still I sounded the depths of reverie. There was a bustle outside
and growing darkness. Then, as I lay, there came voices to my door, guttural
tones blended with liquid ones; lastly a timid knock. Quickly I answered it.
    "Is this room number forty-seven?" a soft voice asked.
    Even ere she spoke I divined it was the Jewish girl of the grey eyes, and now
I saw her hair was like a fair cloud, and her face fragile as a flower.
    "Yes," I answered her.
    She led forward the old man.
    "This is my grandfather. The Steward told us this was his room."
    "Oh, all right; he'd better take the lower berth."
    "Thank you, indeed; he's an old man and not very strong."
    Her voice was clear and sweet, and there was an infinite tenderness in the
tone.
    "You must come in," I
said. "I'll leave you with him for a while so that you can make him
comfortable."
    "Thank you again," she responded gratefully.
    So I withdrew, and when I returned she was gone; but the old man slept
peacefully.
    It was late before I turned in. I went on deck for a time. We were cleaving
through blue-black night, and on our right I could dimly discern the coast
festooned by twinkling lights. Every one had gone below, I thought, and the
loneliness pleased me. I was very quiet, thinking how good it all was, the balmy
wind, the velvet vault of the night frescoed with wistful stars, the
freedom-song of the sea; how restful, how sane, how loving!
    Suddenly I heard a sound of sobbing, the merciless sobbing of a woman's
breast. Distinct above the hollow breathing of the sea it assailed me, poignant
and insistent. Wonderingly I looked around. Then, in a shadow of the upper deck,
I made out a slight girl-figure, crouching all alone. It was Grey Eyes, crying
fit to break her heart.
    "Poor little beggar!" I muttered.
    ----

CHAPTER II
    "Gr-r-ryou little brat! If you open your face to him I'll kill you, kill
you, see!"
    The voice was Madam Winklestein's, and the words, hissed in a whisper of
incredible malignity, arrested me as if I had been struck by a live wire. I
listened. Behind the stateroom door there followed a silence, grimly intense;
then a dull pounding; then the same savage undertone.
    "See here, Berna, we're next to you twowe're onto your curves. We know the
old man's got the stuff in his gold-belt, two thousand in bills. Now, my dear,
my sweet little angel what thinks she's too good to mix with the likes o' us, we
need the mon, see!" (Knock, knock.) "And we're goin' to have it, see!" (Knock,
knock.) "That's where you come in, honey, you're goin' to get it for us. Ain't
you now, darlin'!" (Knock, knock, knock.)
    Faintly, very faintly, I