He rested on the oars, fingering his shoulder. The tender swung dangerously near the corrugated rock of the shore, and Woolfolk sharply directed: "Keep way on her."
"Yes, sir," Halvard replied, once more swinging into his short, efficient stroke. It was, however, less sure than usual; an oar missed its hold and skittered impotently over the water, drenching Woolfolk with a brief, cold spray. Again the bow of the tender dipped into the point of land they were rounding, and John Woolfolk spoke more abruptly than before.
He was seriously alarmed about Millie. Her face was apathetic, almost blank, and her arms hung across his knees with no more response than a doll's. He wondered desperately if, as she had said, her spirit had died; if the Millie Stope that had moved him so swiftly and tragically from his long indifference, his aversion to life, had gone, leaving him more hoplessly alone than before. The sudden extinction of Ellen's life had been more supportable than Millie's crouching dumbly at his feet. His arm unconsciously tightened about her, and she gazed up with a momentary, questioning flicker of her wide-opened eyes. He repeated her name in a deep whisper, but her head fell forward loosely, and left him in racking doubt.
Now he could see the shortly swaying riding light of the _Gar_. Halvard was propelling them vigorously but erratically forward. At times he remuttered his declarations about the encounter with Nicholas. The stray words reached Woolfolk:
"Stopped him--the cursed dark--a scratch."
He brought the tender awkwardly alongside the ketch, with a grinding shock, and held the boats together while John Woolfolk shifted Millie to the deck. Woolfolk took her immediately into the cabin; where, lighting a swinging lamp, he placed her on one of the prepared berths and endeavored to wrap her in a blanket. But, in a shuddering access of fear, she rose with outheld palms.
"Nicholas!" she cried shrilly. "There--at the door!"
He sat beside her, restraining her convulsive effort to cower in a far, dark angle of the cabin.
"Nonsense!" he told her brusquely. "You are on the _Gar_. You are safe. In an hour you will be in a new world."
"I am here," he insisted with a tightening of his heart. He rose, animated by an overwhelming necessity to get the ketch under way, to leave at once, for ever, the invisible shore of the bay. He gently folded her again in the blanket, but she resisted him. "I'd rather stay up," she said with a sudden lucidity. "It's nice here; I wanted to come before, but he wouldn't let me."