"Deolda!" he yelled. "Deolda, Johnny's all right!"
She caught him by the wrist. "Tell me what's happened!"
"The other feller--he's lost."
"_Lost?_" said Deolda, her breath drawn in sharply. "Lost--how?"
"Washed overboard," said Joe. "See--looka here. When Johnny got ashore
this is what he says." He read aloud from the newspaper he had brought,
a word at a time, like a grammar-school kid:
"With a lame propeller and driven out of her course, the _Anita_ made
Plymouth this morning without her Captain, Mark Hammar. John Deutra, who
brought her in, made the following statement:
"'I was lying in my bunk unable to sleep, for we were being combed by
waves again and again. Suddenly I noticed we were wallowing in the
trough of the sea, and went on deck to see what was wrong. I groped my
way to the wheel. It swung empty. Captain Hammar was gone, washed
overboard in the storm. How I made port myself I don't know--'"
Here his reading was interrupted by an awful noise--Deolda laughing,
Deolda laughing and sobbing, her hands above her head, a wild thing,
terrible.
"Go on," my aunt told the boy. "Go home!" And she and Deolda went into
the house, her laughter filling it with awful sound.
After a time she quieted down. She stood staring out of the window,
hands clenched.
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