The only light in the
House of Refuge now came from the two small
windows, one above the form of the suffering man
and the other behind the dead body of Archie. Jane's
head was close to the boy's chest, her sobs coming
from between her hands, held before her face. The
shock of Archie's death had robbed her of all her
strength. Lucy knelt beside her, her shoulder resting
against a pile of cordage. Every now and then she
would steal a furtive glance around the room--at
the boat, at the rafters overhead, at the stove with
its pile of kindling--and a slight shudder would
pass through her. She had forgotten nothing of the
past, nor of the room in which she crouched. Every
scar and stain stood out as clear and naked as those
on some long-buried wreck dug from shifting sands
by a change of tide.
A few feet away the doctor was stripping the wet
clothes from the rescued man and piling the dry
coats over him to warm him back to life. His emergency
bag, handed in by Polhemus through the crack
of the closed doors, had been opened, a bottle selected,
and some spoonfuls of brandy forced down the sufferer's
throat. He saw that the sea-water had not
harmed him; it was the cordwood and wreckage
that had crushed the breath out of him.
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