HAPTER XII

Between Sun and Sun

Walking when he could, crawling on hands and knees when his legs buckled
under him, MacRae left a blood-sprinkled trail over grass and moss and
fallen leaves. He lived over and over that few minutes which had seemed
so long, in which he had been battered against broken rocks, in which he
had clawed over weedy ledges armored with barnacles that cut like
knives, hauling Steve Ferrara's body with him so that it should not
become the plaything of the tides. MacRae was no stranger to death. He
had seen it in many terrible forms. He had heard the whistle of the
invisible scythe that cuts men down. He knew that Steve was dead when he
dragged him at last out of the surf, up where nothing but high-flung
drops of spray could reach him. He left him there on a mossy ledge,
knowing that he could do nothing more for Steve Ferrara and that he must
do something for himself. So he came at last to the end of that path
which led to his own house and crept and stumbled up the steps into the
deeper darkness of those hushed, lonely rooms.

MacRae knew he had suffered no vital hurt, no broken bones. But he had
been fearfully buffeted among those sea-drenched rocks, bruised from
head to foot, shocked by successive blows. He had spent his strength to
keep the sea from claiming Steve. He had been unmercifully slashed by
the barnacles. He was weak from loss of blood, and he was bleeding yet,
in oozy streams,--face, hands, shoulders, knees, wherever those
lance-edged shells had raked his flesh.

He was sick and dizzy. But he could still think and act. He felt his way
to matches on a kitchen shelf, staggered into his bedroom, lit a lamp.
Out of a dresser drawer he took clean white cloth, out of another
carbolic acid. He got himself a basin of water.

He sat down on the edge of his bed. As he tore the first strip of linen
things began to swim before his eyes. He sagged back on a pillow. The
room and the lamp and all that was near him blended in a misty swirl. He
had the extraordinary sensation of floating lightly in space that was
quiet and profoundly dark--and still he was cloudily aware of footsteps
ringing hollow on the bare floor of the other room.

He became aware--as if no interval had elapsed--of being moved, of hands
touching him, of a stinging sensation of pain which he understood to be
the smarting of the cuts in his flesh. But time must have gone winging
by, he knew, as his senses grew clearer. He