The Wind and the Spray Read Online Free

change her address, write to David, say her goodbyes.
    The girls, too, had insisted on a farewell theatre night, and since she was to be their guest she could scarcely refuse. She had not wanted to, anyway, she liked them too much; all the same it had made a short time even shorter, and her necessarily curtailed sleeping hours were telling on her now.
    Then again, she thought ruefully, a trifle uneasily, Esther’s and Marion’s and Lynn’s reaction to her announcement that she was going to an island had been discouraging. They had looked dubiously at each other, obviously wondering whether they had done a wise thing in recommending her to Mr. Kittey. She had laughed at their doubts, but once away from them her laughter had died. Looking around now at the grey sea and feeling the headache growing stronger and stronger, she knew the laughter was dead indeed.
    Luke had gone into the galley. Presently he came out with mugs of steaming tea.
    Laurel took hers eagerly, cupping her hands around the hot thick china, for the wind was blowing cold, the spray was so sharp that it pierced like needles of ice.
    After a few gulps she felt a little better.
    “Do you work on the whaling station, Mr. Lucas? ”
    “Call me Luke, miss, everyone does. No, I don’t, I work on the boats. Two, there are, a whaler, the Clyde, and the Leeward here. There’s a third on the slips about the Leeward's size, the Windward it’s to be. Building it himself, he is. Nothing Nor can’t do.” He nodded his head to the man he previously only had referred to as Cap and who was now drinking his tea in long quaffs, one large, lean, dark hand on the wheel.
    Nor ... that was what it sounded like. Norman, probably, or Nor as in Norton, Norville, something of the sort. It surprised Laurel a little. Something about the man seemed not entirely Australian, not Australian as she had encountered Australians, and she had expected a different variety of name, a name with a foreign origin perhaps. The headache was coining back, and more viciously than b efore. She put the tea down, too tired even to drink.
    The man at the wheel put his cup down at the same time, but unlike hers drained to the last drop. As he did so, he gave Laurel a quick glance. At once he signaled Luke to his side.
    “All right?” he asked Laurel when Luke had taken over from him.
    “Of course I’m all right.”
    “You’d better take that tablet after all.”
    “I don’t need any tablets, I’ve only a headache.”
    “Call it what you like, even the French mal-de-mer if it pleases you, it still comes to the same thing—and the same result. Take this tablet and go and he down.”
    “I tell you I’m not sick, I—I — ”
    Suddenly the headache seemed all the pain in the world housed in Laurel’s own inadequate brow. She put her hand up to her blinded eyes, swaying a little at the sharp agony, and in that moment he swept her into his arms, carried her into the small, cabin, placed her on the bunk without any more argument or ado.
    “I—” she protested.
    “Lie still.”
    “I’m not sick”.
    “Will you shut up,” he said.
    He left her then, and she lay still with pain, frightened to move her head—until something drove the pain away, or at least shoved it aside, so that a new sensation could take possession itself.
    It was fear; plain, unadulterated fear. She was simply, completely, thoroughly and quite horribly scared.
    For the wind was not the comradely wind of her wind and spray any longer, it was a gale.
    It was a gale that was screeching its hate of her, of them, of the Leeward, of the entire world, that was sending the sleet down like javelins, that was whipping the dark clouds until they spread into one cloud and it was as obscure as night.
    We’re going to go down, Laurel thought. She shut her eyes in terror. She could hear the waves slobbering greedily over the deck. Down, she thought again, down, down, down ... oh, David, David my dear.
    Then abruptly she wasn’t