Part 16 (1/2)
”The boat set sail and I watched it glide westward over the sparkling waves, toward the lower end of the lake, watching for an hour until it had slipped behind some point and was lost to sight. Then I scanned the heavens to see if the storm I knew must come would break before it was time for the yachting party to return. Low on the northern horizon clouds were mustering, their heads barely discernible above the rim of the world. But for the camel's warning I would not have seen them. The storm was surely coming. By six o'clock, or thereabouts, it would burst. The party was to have its fish-fry at six, at some point on the south sh.o.r.e. On the south sh.o.r.e would be the wreck, if wreck there was to be.
”With no definite plan, no definite purpose, save to be near my love in the threatening peril, I set out for the south sh.o.r.e. By water, it is from a mile and a half to three miles across Green Lake. By land, it is many times farther. From road to road of those parallel with the major axis of the lake, it is four miles at the narrowest, and it is three miles from the end of the lake before you reach the first north and south road connecting the parallels. Ten miles, then, after you leave the end of the lake on the side where the hotels are, before you are at the end on the other side. And then thirteen miles of sh.o.r.e.
”So what with the distance and the time I had spent watching the shallop that contained my love pa.s.s from my field of vision the afternoon had far waned when I had reached the opposite sh.o.r.e, and when I had descended to the beach at a point where I had thought I might command the most extensive view and discover the yacht, if it had begun to make its way homeward, the light of day had given place to twilight. But not the twilight of imminent night, the twilight of the coming tempest. For the brewing of a fearful storm had now some time been apparent. A hush lay on the land. A candle flame would have shot straight upward. Nature waited, silently cowering.
”To the northward advanced, in serried columns of black, the beetling clouds that were turning the day into night, the distant booming of aerial artillery thundering forth the preluding cannonade of the charge. Higher and higher into the firmament shot the front of the advancing ranks in twisting curls of inky smoke, yet all the while the ma.s.s dropped nearer and nearer to the earth and the light of day departed, save where low down in the west a band of pale gold lay against the horizon, color and nothing more, as unglowing as a yellow streak in a painted sunset. Against this weird, cold light, I saw a naked mast, and then a sail went creaking up and I heard voices. They had been shortening sail. By some unspent impulse of the vanished wind, or the impact of the waves still rolling heavily and gla.s.sily from a recent blow, the yacht was still progressing and came moving past me fifty or sixty feet from sh.o.r.e.
”I heard the voices of women expressing terror, begging the men to do something. Danger that comes in the dark is far more fearsome than danger which comes in the light. I heard the men explaining the impossibility of getting ash.o.r.e. For two miles on this coast, a line of low, but unscalable cliffs rose sheer from the water's edge, overhanging it, in fact, for the waves had eaten several feet into the base of the cliffs. To get out and stand in front of these cliffs was to court death. The waves of the coming storm would either beat a man to death against the rocks, or drown him, for the water was four feet deep at the edge of the cliffs and the waves would wash over his head.
For two miles, I have said, there was a line of cliffs on this coast, for two miles save just where I stood, the only break, a narrow rift which, coinciding with a section line, was the end of a road coming down to the water. They could not see this rift in the dusk, perhaps were ignorant of its existence and so not looking for it.
”The voices I had heard were all unfamiliar and it was not until the yacht had drifted past me that I was apprised it was indeed the craft I sought by hearing the voice of Mildred saying, with an a.s.sumed jocularity that could not hide the note of fear:
”'What will _I_ do? All the other girls have a man to save them. I am the extra girl.'
”I drove my long-legged steed into the water after the boat none too soon, for the whistling of a premonitory gust filled the air. Quickly through the water strode the camel, and, with his lariat in my hand, I plumped down upon the stern overhang just as the mainsail went slatting back and forth across the boat and everybody was ducking his head. In the confusion, n.o.body observed my arrival.
”'She's coming about,' cried the voice of the skipper, Gannett. 'A few of these gusts would get us far enough across to be out of danger from the main storm.'
”But she did not come about. I could feel the camel tugging at the lariat as the swerving of the boat jerked him along, but presently the strain ceased, for the boat lay wallowing as before. Again a fitful gust, again the slatting of the sail, the skipper put his helm down hard, the boat put her nose into the wind, hung there, and fell back.
”'She won't mind her helm!'
”'She won't come about!'
”'She acts as if she were towing something, were tied to something!'
”'What's that big rock behind there? Who the devil is this? And how the devil did he get here?'
”In the midst of these excited and alarmed exclamations came the solemn, portentous voice of the camel tolling out in the unnatural night the tocsin of the approaching hurricane.
”'It's the Dago!' cried Gannett, examining me by the fleeting flash of a match. 'It's his d.a.m.ned camel towing behind that won't let us come about. Pitch him overboard!'
”'Oh, save me!' appealed Mildred.
”There she had been, sitting just in front of me and I hadn't known it was she. It was not strange that she had faith that I who had arrived could also depart.
”'Selim,' I called, pulling the camel to the boat. I had never had a name for him before, but it was high time he had one, so now I named him. 'Selim,' and there the faithful beast was and with Mildred in my arms, I scrambled on to his back and urged him toward the rift in the wall of cliff.
”As if I had spurned it with my foot, the boat sprang away behind us, a sudden rus.h.i.+ng blast filling her sails and laying her almost over, and then she was out of our sight, into the teeth of the tempest, yelling, screaming, howling with a hundred voices as it darted from the sky and laid flat the waves and then hurled them up in a ma.s.s of stinging spray.
”In fond antic.i.p.ation, I had dwelt upon the homeward ride with Mildred. A-camelback, I was, as it were, upon my native heath, master of myself, a.s.sured, and at ease. I had planned to tell her of my love, plead my cause with Oriental fervor and imagery, but before we reached sh.o.r.e the tempest was so loud that she could not have heard me unless I had shouted, and I had no mind to bawl my love. Worse still, when once we were going across the wind and later into it, I could not open my mouth at all. We reached the hotel and on its lee side I lifted her down to the topmost of the piazza steps. I determined not be delayed longer. If ever there was to be a propitious occasion, it was now when I had rescued her from encompa.s.sing peril. I retained hold of her hand. She gave me a glance in which was at least grat.i.tude, and I dared hope, something more, and I was about to make my declaration, when she made a little step, her right foot almost sunk under her and she gave an agonized cry and hobbling, limping, hopping on one foot, pa.s.sed from me across the piazza to the stairs leading to the second story, whither she ascended upon her hands and knees.
”That wretched stone from the cavern where Mahommed slept in the Hegira! How many times during the day had she wanted to take her shoe off? She would ascertain the cause of her torment, she would lay it to me. It had indeed been an amulet against sudden love. I was the man whose love it had forefended.
”'Gannett's yacht went down and all aboard of her were drowned,' said one of the bellboys to me. 'Everybody in the hotel is feeling dreadful.'
”'How do you know they are drowned?'
”'Everybody in the hotel says so. I don't know how they found out.'
”'What's that at the pier?' said I.
”The lights at the end of the pier shone against a white expanse of sail and there was a yacht slowly making a landing.