The outline became clearer. It was a man sagging down upon the deck. His head was bare, his hand outflung limply. She was on her knees beside him, and it was Mickey.
"Mickey, Mickey ..."
He didn't answer; his head sagged limply as she moved him. "Mickey," she cried despairingly. And remembered Alfred Castiogne who was murdered in the lifeboat the night before with a knife in his back.
But Mickey could not be dead. His heart was beating— unless it was the faint, constant vibration of the ship. She thought there was a faint pulse at his wrist. "Mickey . . ." she whispered again, and thought, I must get help. I must hurry. . . . She lowered his head gently to the deck again, turned into the nearest doorway into the ship, and was instantly lost.'
Passageways stretched forward and aft and across; there were lights everywhere and closed doors everywhere. She turned to the right and hurried along a gray-painted passageway. Which way were the wards? There would be nurses there and corpsmen. She came on a bisecting passage and turned again and found herself among offices and laboratories. She turned back. She mustn't scream; there were sick patients asleep but she must get help somehow. She hurried back, took another turn and then was completely lost.
A strange ship is as confusing as a strange city. If she had not been in the portion of the ship reserved for storerooms she would have immediately found people: nurses, corpsmen and doctors on night duty, alert for every sound and every movement. Just for the moment there was no one.
But nothing could really have hurt Mickey; he had slipped and fallen. He had somehow struck his head against the stairs or against the bulkhead.
That was it. He wasn't dead; he might not even be injured. She was hysterical and terrified because Alfred Castiogne, who had nothing to do with Mickey or with her, had been murdered. No one could have struck Mickey. No one could have crept along that deck on stealthy, furtive feet. No one could have waited in the black, small rim of shadow. Murder had been in the little lifeboat—not here.
She pushed open a door and was on deck, but this time again she was on the port side. The deck stretched forward, white and lighted; aft, around the stern, it lost itself in shadow. She'd go back around the deck, back to the starboard side of the ship and Mickey. It seemed a quicker and more direct way than through the ship. She ran along the lighted strip of deck and entered the heavy, sudden shadow around the stern.
It was so sudden and dark a shadow that she groped for the bulkhead to guide her. Fog creeping closer upon the ship was cold and misty on her face. The width of the ship still divided her from Mickey, and the fog was like a curtain further obscuring the shadowy curve of the deck ahead. Behind was a rosy brightness, reflected all around against the wreaths of fog. Here it was only dark and empty, with the rush of the ship through the dark water below sounding very loud.
And very near, there was a curious regularity about the whisper and rush of the waves. Like someone breathing heavily.
She stopped.
But murder had been in the little lifeboat! Not here . . .
Then, with indescribable suddenness and finality, the black water seemed to roar and crash upon her ears, engulfing her, dragging her down across the slippery deck into its own blackness and chaos.
Her fighting, blind hands brushed the middle railing, caught at it, missed, caught hard into space again and then there was nothing but darkness and fog.
It was indeed at about that time that the Magnolia actually entered the thick bank of fog lying ahead and Captain Svendsen took the telephone and gave an order to slow down the engines.
6
Gradually the throb of the engines emerged from darkness and the rush of water and began to beat against Marcia's ears. Light cut through the darkness too and beat upon her eyes. Someone was holding her; she was taking great gulps of air that stung her throat and burned her lungs, and her heart was louder than the engines. The light seemed suddenly so bright upon her eyelids that she couldn't lift them; it was dazzling, dizzying, whirling around. Someone was rubbing her hands inadequately somehow, inexpertly, saying something she could not understand. She opened her eyes and the light was not half as bright as it had seemed.
A man held her and bent over her. He was in uniform; the coat hung like a cape over his shoulders, so it fell around her too. His cap shaded his eyes, but she knew the face and she knew the voice. Only she couldn't just then say to whom the face and voice belonged, or how she knew.
She felt, however, an enormous sense of safety, as if she had been awakened from the chill horror of a nightmare and brought back to the reality of a normal world. It was so extraordinarily comforting, that sense of security, that she closed her eyes again, sinking into it as if it, too, had warm, safe arms. He held her against him and said: "Do you hear me? Marcia . . ."
A faint question touched her. It seemed odd somehow that this voice should speak to her just like that, call her Marcia. He said more urgently: "Can you walk? I'll help you. Try to walk . . ."
The strength of the supporting arm was, too, extraordinarily comforting. Of course she would walk. She was on her feet, leaning against this man she knew so well and yet somehow could not name. Lights were in her face; she opened her eyes again.
The light was diffused, coming from misty halos, touched with a strange rosy haze. The deck stretched ahead of them and lost itself in the foggy halos of light. All around the ship fog lay in thick curtains and reflected the radiance of the Red Crosses on her sides and on her smokestack, so it touched everything with a soft glow like firelight. It touched the face of the man beside her, holding her close against him, urging her along that narrow, glistening strip of deck. She looked up at the strongly curved mouth and broad chin. The shadow cast by the visor of his cap fell over his eyes. She said in a husky voice that seemed to hurt: "Colonel Morgan. That's who it is. . . ."
"In this way," he said, and held open a door and suddenly they had left the deck with its queerly rosy fog and were in a warm, dry, brightly lighted passage. And she remembered the nightmare.
Only it hadn't been a nightmare.
"I caught the railing. I caught the railing and missed and caught again and someone . . ."
"Don't talk. I'll get a doctor. It's only a little further . . ."
He looked different in these lights which were undimmed by fog; his face was set and hard and very white around the mouth.
They were at a door which was open; she was still half dazed by the warmth, by the lights, by the nightmare. A man in officer's uniform got up quickly and inquiringly from a desk chair and came toward them. Colonel Morgan said rapidly: "There's been an accident. . . ." And another memory of the nightmare came to her. "Mickey . . ." she cried. "He is hurt. He's on deck. . . ."
She was on a small white couch; the man in uniform was leaning over her. Colored Morgan had disappeared. Everything glistened around her. It was a dispensary with a clear, bright light over everything. "These slippery decks," said the doctor. "Here, let me look at you. Anything broken?"
She tried to tell him. "He is out there. I tried to get help. Someone was there. ..."
He was busy at a table across the room; he came back toward her with a glass of water and something in his hand. "Take this."
"You don't understand. . . ."
"Take this." He held her head up so she could swallow the little pill. He pulled a blanket over her. "Now then, just don't move for a minute. I'll send a nurse in to you. Don't worry. . . ."
Then he, too, had disappeared, closing the door firmly behind him.