Part 23 (1/2)
He drew her head down upon his knee. ”Let it lie there,” he said, speaking as to a tired child. ”I will hold you quite steady. Now shut your eyes and try to sleep. The storm is no worse than it was; and since the boat has lived this long in this sea, she may live through the night. And with morning may come many chances of safety. Try to rest in that hope.”
Faint and exhausted from cold and terror, she submitted like a child, and lay with closed eyes in a sort of stupor within his arms.
There was less lightning now, and the thunder sounded in long booming peals, instead of short, sharp cannon cracks. The rain, too, had ceased; but the wind blew furiously, and the sea ran in tremendous waves.
Regulus stirred, groaned, and struggled into a sitting posture. ”Lie down again!” ordered Darkeih. ”We 's all on de way to Heaben, but if n.i.g.g.e.r shake de boat, we'll get dere befo' de Lawd ready for us. Lie down!” Regulus, muttering to himself, looked stupidly about him, then dropped his head back into her lap. In three minutes he was snoring.
Darkeih's whimpering died away, and her turbaned head sank lower and lower, until it rested upon that of Regulus, and she, too, slept.
Landless sat very still, holding his burden lightly and tenderly, and staring into the darkness. Against the steep slope of the sea, a picture framed itself, melted away, and was followed by others in long procession. He saw a ruinous, ivy-grown hall, and an old, grave, formal garden, where, between long box hedges broken by fantastic yews, there walked a boy, book in hand. A man with a stately figure and a stern, careworn face met the boy, and they leaned upon a broken dial, and the father reasoned with the son of Right and Truth and Liberty, and something touched upon the Tyrannicides of old. The yew trees drooped their sombre boughs about the figures, and they were gone, and in their place roared and swelled the Chesapeake.... The sound of the storm became the sound of a battle-cry. He saw a clanging fight where sword clashed upon armor, and artillery belched fire and thunder, and horse and man went down in the melee, and were trampled under foot amidst shrieks and oaths and stern prayers. The boy who had leaned upon the dial fought coolly, desperately, drunk with the joy of battle, stung to fierce effort by his father's eyes. The great banner, blazoned with the Cross of Saint George, streamed in crimson and azure between the battle and the lonely watcher in the storm-tossed boat, and the vision was gone.... The spires of a great city, where men walked with long faces and church bells made the only music, rose through the gloom, and he saw a dingy chamber in a dingy stack of buildings, and within it, bending over great tomes of law, a man, impoverished and orphaned, but young, strong, and full of hope,--a man well spoken of and allowed to be on the road to high preferment. The chamber wavered into darkness; but the city spires flashed light, and the slow ringing changed to mad peals from joy bells. Some one had been restored--to drop balm upon the bleeding heart of a nation, to bring light to them that sit in darkness,--so said the joy bells.... He saw a loathsome prison, and the man who had sat in the dingy chamber lying therein under accusation of a crime which he had not committed. He saw him pining there, week after week, month after month, untried, forgotten, at the mercy of an enemy to his house whose day had come with the Restored One.... The prison vanished, and the waves that tossed around him were the waves of the Atlantic. A s.h.i.+p ploughed her way through them. He saw into her hold,--a horrible place of stench and filth and darkness,--a place where hounds would not have kenneled. Men and women were there who cursed and fought for the scanty, worm-eaten food that was thrown them. Some wore gyves: they were heavy upon the wrists and ankles of the man of his vision. He saw a face looking down upon this man, a handsome supercilious face, with insolent amus.e.m.e.nt in the languid eyes and in the curves of the lips. The hatches were battened down upon the cargo of misery, and the s.h.i.+p with its brutal captain and its handful of gold-laced, dicing, swearing pa.s.sengers vanished.... He saw a sandy, gra.s.s-grown street, and a row of mean houses, and a low, brick building with barred windows. There was a crowd before this building, and a man standing upon the platform of a pillory was selling human flesh and blood. He saw the boy who had stood beneath the yews of the old Hall, who had fought at Worcester beneath his father's eye; the man who had lain in prison and in the noisome hold of the s.h.i.+p, put up and sold to the highest bidder. He saw him carried away with other merchandise to the home of his purchaser. He saw a Virginia plantation lying fair and serene beneath a Virginia heaven; and a wide porch, and standing therein an angelic vision, all grace and beauty, vivid youth and splendor.
The picture vanished into the night that raved about him, and with a long shaken sigh he let his eyes fall from the watery steeps to the face of the woman who lay within his arms. He had not looked at her before, conceiving that she might be awake and feel his glance upon her. Now he could tell from her breathing that she slept. He gazed upon the pure pale face with the golden hair falling about it, in a pa.s.sion of pity and tenderness. She moaned now and then in her sleep, or turned uneasily in his arms. Once she spoke a few words, and he bent eagerly to catch them, thinking that she had awakened and was speaking to him. They were:--
”Ah, your Excellency! where I reign there shall be only good Churchmen and loyal Cavaliers--no Roundheads, no rebel or convict servants!” and she laughed in her sleep.
Landless shrank as from a mortal blow, then broke into a bitter laugh, and said to himself, ”Thou art a fool, G.o.dfrey Landless. It were but too easy to forget to-night what thou art and what thou must seem to her.
Thou art answered according to thy folly.” He sighed impatiently, and withdrawing his gaze from the sleeping face, fell into a sombre reverie.
He was roused to active consciousness by a sudden and death-like pause in the gale. The lightning showed the pall of cloud hanging low, black, and unbroken; but the wind had sunk into an ominous calm. He looked anxiously around him, then softly disengaging himself from Patricia, leaned across her, and shook Regulus awake. The negro started up, stupid from sleep and from his wound.
”What is it, ma.s.sa?” he queried. ”Wake mighty early at Rosemead.... Lawd hab mercy! we 's still on de Chesapeake!”
”We will be in the Chesapeake in a moment,” said Landless sternly, ”if you stagger about in that way. Sit down and pull your wits together. You are like to need them all directly.” He touched Darkeih and said, as her eyes, wide with alarm, opened upon him, ”Listen, my wench! Whatever happens, you are to trust yourself to Regulus. He is a strong swimmer and he will take care of you. You hear, Regulus!”
”What is it?” exclaimed Patricia, as he bent over her. ”Why have you waked Regulus? And oh! has not that dreadful wind died away?”
”It has stopped, madam, stopped suddenly and utterly,” he said gravely.
”But it will come upon us from another quarter, and it will bring the sea with it.” He raised her, and held her with his arm. ”Trust yourself to me when it comes,” he said gently. ”If I can save you, I will.”
There was no time for more. Above them broke a new and more terrible storm. A ball of fire shot from the cloud into the sea; it was followed by a crash that seemed to shake the earth. A cataract of rain descended.
From the northeast there swooped upon them a wind to which the gale of an hour before seemed a zephyr. It drove the boat before it as if she had been the bird from which she took her name. It piled wave on wave until the sea ran in mountains. Athwart the storm came a dull booming roar, and above the great hills of water appeared a long ridge crested with white.
”It is coming,” said Landless.
Patricia looked up at him with great, despairing, courageous eyes. ”I have caused your death,” she said. ”Forgive me.”
There came a vivid flash, and a loud scream from Darkeih. ”De lan'! de bressed, bressed, lan'!”
Landless wheeled. Silhouetted against the lit sky he saw a fringe of pines, and below it a low, shelving sh.o.r.e where the waves were breaking in foam and thunder. The Bluebird, driven by the wind, was hurrying towards it in mad bounds. The great wave overtook her, bore her onward with it, and sunk her within fifty feet of the sh.o.r.e.
Ten minutes later Landless, breathless and exhausted, staggered from out the h.e.l.l of pounding waves and blinding, stinging spray on to the sh.o.r.e.
Unlocking Patricia's arms from about his neck, he laid her gently down upon the sand and turned to look for the other occupants of the hapless Bluebird. They were close behind him. In a few minutes the two men, battling against wind and rain, had borne the women out of reach of the waves, and had placed them in the shelter of a low bank of sand. As Landless set his burden down he said reverently, ”I thank G.o.d, madam.”
”And I thank G.o.d,” she answered, in the same tone.
He tried to s.h.i.+eld her from the wind with his body. ”It is frightful,”
he said, ”that you should be exposed to such a night. I pray G.o.d that you take no harm.”
”Would it not be more sheltered higher up the sh.o.r.e, under those trees?”