Strange Yesterday by Howard Fast Page A

would live. Never before in the years he had sailed with the Angel had he been so nervous and apprehensive; never before had he hung so longingly upon the outcome of a chase. Again and again he went over his mental calculations. Certainly they were holding their distance; certainly they were gaining….
    The British ship tried another shot from a bow-chaser. As it fell short—short by a greater distance than before—the face of John Preswick broke into a smile. Leaning over the rail, he shook his fist at the frigate. Beneath him the stern ports were open and the blue muzzles of long guns peered impertinently forth…. If only the wind would hold!
    The sun rose higher; the two ships flew on, one after the other, foam curling away in two white fountains from the bow of each. Little clumps of cloud scudded across the sky.
    For a time John Preswick took the wheel. It gave him a feeling of purposeful effort to give his body to the pull of the spokes, to know that even a quiver of his arms would turn the ship from the wind. With his legs widespread, he stood, his head thrown back, his straw-colored hair free to the breeze. Like a giant vulture the spanker flapped above him, crossing his face with a long, oblique shadow; the song of the rigging—the hum of the wind as it tore through the shrouds—whined pleadingly in his ears. He had forgotten, for a moment, the girl. He laughed with the heat of the chase, with the obedience of the ship under his fingers.
    He laughed, and his great form swayed. His shirt and his pantaloons were wrapped forward about his limbs. He seemed a very part of the straining vessel.
    Then he felt her. He neither saw nor heard her, for she was behind him, and she was silent, but he felt her presence as surely as he felt the wind in his hair. His laugh died on his lips, and he crouched tense at the wheel. Why it was so he did not know, but he lacked the power to turn. For all of an hour he knew she was there, staring at his back, but he could not turn about, could not face to her, dared not. Like a whipped terrier he hung to the steering-gear.
    The seaman came to relieve him. Giving up the tiller, he faced slowly about. Leaning against the stern rail, she was looking at him, a curious, thin smile fixed upon her lips. She said—Inez Preswick—as he came towards her:
    â€œI am afraid you spend too much of your time upon the poop. If you had been forward this morning, you would have seen a burial at sea. But then, I do not suppose the gruesomeness of even so tragic a thing as that would affect you—Mr. Ridge.”
    He could say nothing. Finding himself drawn, he continued to approach her, coming almost to her side, staring always into her face, noticing how large were her eyes and how tight her lips. He was almost frightened, seeing her in the full blast of the wind, for it wrapped her frock to the back of her form, showing her like a slim and frail reed. Why she should have given him an impression of strength he did not know, for she was, in reality, small and thin. But it might have been her hair, cast forward, parted by her neck, and blowing out in a manner that gave its strands to the sun, making them bright with red-brown fire. She went on:
    â€œWhat you are, I do not know. I have read of such men as you, but I thought them to be drugged fancies of romanticists. That any human could be so cruel, so heartless, so calloused, is—” She broke off her words, catching her lips in her teeth. Then she said:
    â€œYou shot down Mr. Lennox. A man would not shoot down even an animal in that fashion.”
    â€œDo you know that Lennox is responsible for—this?” he flung at her.
    â€œIs that why you murdered him, or because—?”
    â€œI love you,” he answered, his voice a harsh whisper.
    He had never thought to see in the face of a woman such disgust, such dread. It came to him that she feared him now, say what she might; but he derived no