Part 23 (2/2)
He remembered, too, the great contrast between Quebec and New York that had struck him when he arrived at the port at the mouth of the Hudson with the hunter and the Onondaga. The French capital in Canada was all of the state; it was its creature. If the state declined, it declined, there was little strength at the roots, little that sprang from the soil, but in New York, which men already forecast as the metropolis of the New World, there was strength everywhere. It might be a sprawling town. There might be no courtliness to equal the courtliness at the heart of Quebec, but there was vigor, vigor everywhere. The people were eager, restless, curious, always they worked and looked ahead.
He saw all these things very clearly. Silence, loneliness and distance gave a magnificent perspective. Facts that were obscured when he was near at hand, now stood out sharp and true. His thoughts in this period were often those of a man double his age. His iron health too remained.
His was most emphatically the sound mind in the sound body, each helping the other, each stimulating the other to greater growth.
It was a fact, however, that the Onondaga belief, peopling the air and all sorts of inanimate objects with spirits, grew upon him; perhaps it is better to say that it was a feeling rather than a belief. According to Tayoga the good spirits fought with the bad, and on his island the good had prevailed. They had told him that a s.h.i.+p was coming, and then they had warned him that it would be a s.h.i.+p of pirates. They had shown him how to drive away the ruffians. His inspiration had not been his own, it had come from them and he thankfully acknowledged it.
He told himself now as he went about his island that he heard the good spirits singing among the leaves and he told it to himself so often that he ended by believing it. It was such a pleasant and consoling belief too. He listened to hear them say that he would leave the island when the time was ripe and his imagination was now so extraordinarily vivid that what he expected to hear he heard. The spirits a.s.sured him that when the time came to go he would go. They did not tell him exactly when he would go, but that could not be asked. No one must antic.i.p.ate a complete unveiling of the future. It was sufficient that intimations came out of it now and then.
It was this feeling, amounting to a conviction, that bore him up on a s.h.i.+eld of steel. It soothed the natural impatience of his youth and temperament. Why grieve over not going when he knew that he would go?
Yet, a long time pa.s.sed and there was no sail upon the sea, though the fact failed to shake his faith. Often he climbed his peak of observation and studied the circling horizon through the gla.s.ses, only to find nothing, but he was never discouraged. There was never any fall of the spirits. No s.h.i.+p showed, but the s.h.i.+p that was coming might even then be on the way. She had left some port, probably one in England, not dreaming that it was a most important destiny and duty of hers to pick up a lone lad cast away on an island in the Gulf or the Caribbean--at least it was most important to him.
Now came a time of storms that seemed to him to portend a change in the seasons. The island was swept by wind and rain, but he liked to be lashed by both. He even went out in the dinghy in storms, though he kept inside the reefs, and fought with wave and undertow and swell, until, pleasantly exhausted, he retreated to the beach, drawing his little boat after him, where he watched the sea, vainly struggling to reach the one who had defied it. It was after such contests that he felt strongest of the spirit, ready to challenge anything.
He plunged deeper and deeper into his studies, striving to understand everything. The intensity of his application was possible only because he was alone. Forced to probe, to examine and to ponder, his mind acquired new strength. Many things which otherwise would have been obscure to him became plain. Looking back upon his own eventful life since that meeting with St. Luc and Tandakora in the forest, he was better able to read motives and to understand men. The reason why Adrian Van Zoon wished him to vanish must be money, because only money could be powerful enough to make such a man risk a terrible crime. Well, he would have a great score to settle with Van Zoon. He did not yet know just how he would settle it, but he did not doubt that the day of reckoning would come.
A cask of oil and several lanterns were among his treasures from the s.h.i.+p, and, making use of them, he frequently read late at night, often with the rain beating hard on walls and roof. Then it seemed to him that his mind was clearest, and he resolved again and again that when he returned to his own he would make full use of what he learned on the island. It seemed to him sometimes that his being cast away was a piece of luck and not a misfortune.
A clear day came, and, taking his rifle, he strolled toward his peak of observation, pa.s.sing on the way the herd of wild cattle with the old bull at its head. The big fellow looked at him suspiciously, as if fearing that his friend might be suffering from one of his mad spells again. But Robert's conduct was quite correct. He walked by in a quiet and dignified manner, and, rea.s.sured, the bull went back to his task of reducing the visible gra.s.s supply.
He saw nothing from the peak except the green island and the blue sea all about it, but there was a singing wind among the leaves and it was easy for him to sit down on a rock and fall into a dreaming state. The good spirits were abroad, and it was their voices that he heard among the leaves. Their chant too was full of courage, hope and promise, and his spirits lifted as he listened. They were watching over him, guarding him from evil, and he felt, at last, that they were telling him something.
It is not always easy to know the exact burden of a song, even if it is uplifting, and Robert listened a long time, trying to decipher exactly what the good spirits were saying to him. It was just such a song as they sang to him before the pirate s.h.i.+p came, saving one strain and that was most important. There was no underlying note of warning. Hunt for it as he would, with his fullest power of hearing, he could detect no trace of it. Then he became convinced. Another s.h.i.+p was coming, and this time it was no pirate craft.
He roused himself from his dreaming state and shook his head, but the vision did not depart. The s.h.i.+p was coming and it was for him to receive it. The news of it had been written too deeply upon the sensitive plate of his brain to be effaced, and, as he walked back toward the house, it seemed to grow more vivid. He was too much excited to study that day, and he spent the time building a great heap of wood upon the beach. Even if one were helped by good spirits he must do his own part. They might bring the s.h.i.+p to the horizon's rim, but it was for him to summon it from there, and he would have a great bonfire ready.
The brilliance of the day departed in the afternoon, and it became apparent that the season of rain and storm was not yet over. Clouds marched up in grim battalions from the south and west, rain came in swift puffs and then in long, heavy showers, the sea heaved, breaking into great waves and the surf dashed fiercely on the sharp teeth of the rocks.
Robert's spirits fell. This was not the way in which a rescuing s.h.i.+p should come, under a somber sky and before driving winds. Perhaps he had read the voices of the spirits wrong, or at least the s.h.i.+p, instead of coming now, was coming at some later time, a month or two months away maybe. He watched through the rest of the afternoon, hoping that the clouds would leave, but they only thickened, and, long before the time of sunset, it was almost as dark as night. He was compelled to remain in the shelter of the house, and, in a state of deep depression, he ate his supper without appet.i.te.
The storm was one of the fiercest he had seen while on the island. The rain drove in sheets, beating upon the walls and roof of the house like hail, and the wind kept up a continuous whistling and screaming. All the while the house trembled over him. Nor was there any human voice in the wind. The good spirits, if such existed, would not dare the storm, but had retreated to cover. All the illusion was gone, he was just a lonely boy on a lonely island, listening to the wrath of a hurricane, a s.h.i.+p might or might not come, most probably never, or if it did it would be another pirate.
The storm did not seem to abate as the evening went on, perhaps it was the climax of the season. Tired of hearing its noise he lay down on his couch and at last fell asleep. He was awakened from slumber by an impact upon the drum of his ear like a light blow, but, sitting up, he realized that it was a sound. The storm had not abated. He heard the beat of wind and rain as before, but he knew it was something else that had aroused him. The noise of the storm was regular, it was going on when he fell asleep, and it had never ceased while he slept. This was something irregular, something out of tune with it, and rising above it. He listened intently, every nerve and pulse alive, body and mind at the high pitch of excitement, and then the sound came again, low but distinct, and rising above the steady crash of the storm.
He knew the note. He had heard it often, too often on that terrible day at Ticonderoga. It could be but one thing. It was the boom of a cannon, and it could come only from a s.h.i.+p, a s.h.i.+p in danger, a s.h.i.+p driven by the storm, knowing nothing of either sea or island, sending forth her signal of distress which was also a cry for help.
It was his s.h.i.+p! The s.h.i.+p of rescue! But he must first rescue _it_! Now he heard the voices of the good spirits, the voices that had been silent all through the afternoon and evening, singing through the storm, calling to him, summoning him to action. He had not taken off his clothes and he leaped from the couch, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a lighted lantern, stuffed flint and steel in his pocket, and ran out into the wind and rain, of which he was now scarcely conscious.
The boom came to his ears a second time, off to the east, and now distinctly the report of a cannon. He waited a little, watching, and, when the report came a third time, he saw dimly the flash of the gun, but it was too dark for him to see anything of the s.h.i.+p. She was outside the reefs, how far he could not tell, but he knew by the difference in the three reports that she was driving toward the island.
It was for him to save the unknown vessel that was to save him, and in the darkness and storm he felt equal to the task. His soul leaped within him. His whole body seemed to expand. He knew what to do, and, quick as lightning, he did it. He ran at full speed through the woods, his lighted lantern swinging on his arm, and twice on the way he heard the boom of the cannon, each time a little nearer. The reports merely made him run faster. Time was precious, and in the moment of utmost need he was not willing to lose a second.
He reached the great heap of wood that he had built up on the beach, worked frantically with flint and steel, s.h.i.+elding the shavings at the bottom with his body, and quickly set fire to them. The blaze crackled, leaped and grew. He had built his pyramid so well, and he had selected such inflammable material, that he knew, if the flames once took hold, the wind would fan them so fiercely the rain could not put them out.
Higher sprang the blaze, running to the crest of the pyramid, roaring in the wind and then sending out defiant hissing tongues at the rain. The boom of the cannon came once more, and, then by the light of his splendid bonfire, he looked. There was the s.h.i.+p outside the reefs which his great pyramid of flame now enabled her to see. He shouted in his joy, and threw on more wood. If he could only build that pyramid high enough they would see the opening too and make for it.
He worked frantically, throwing on driftwood, the acc.u.mulation of many years, and the flames biting into every fresh log, roared and leaped higher. The s.h.i.+p ceased to fire her signal guns, and now he saw, with a great surge of joy, that she was beating up in the storm and trying for the opening in the reef, her only chance, the chance that he had given her. He had done his part and he could do no more but feed the fire.
As he threw on wood he watched. His pyramid of flame roared and threw out sparks in myriads. The s.h.i.+p, a sloop, was having a desperate struggle with wind and wave, but his beacon was always there, showing her the way, and he never doubted for a moment that she would make the haven. He was sure of it. It was a terrible storm, and there was a fierce sea beating on the reefs, but a master mind was on the sloop, the mind of a great sailor, and that mind, responding to his signal of the fire, the only one that could have been made, was steering the s.h.i.+p straight for the opening in the reef.
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