Part 37 (1/2)
”And if he ain't, ma,” replied Grandpa Keeler, sententiously, ”he'll know what it is to be out in a squall! but I reckon he's looked out for himself.”
The old Captain's face grew graver; his eyes, in that closed room, which had grown so suddenly dark, took on an intensely solemn look. He did not attempt the narration of any stormy adventures of old. Perhaps the scenes of the past rose too vividly before his eyes. But, as the fiercest gusts came, he kept muttering:--
”I knew what it meant--mild winter on the Cape! There's the devil in the old Cape weather, teacher, and he never skipped four seasons yit! If it ain't one time, it must be another. Yis, yis! mild winter on the Cape, and no March to speak on, and a hurricane in summer! Wall, we're both on us right, ma, and we're both on us wrong. It ain't neither wind ner rain, but the heavens let loose, and G.o.d A'mighty's own power a blowin' of it.
Yis, yis! I had my misgivin's all along; thinks I, better a little more weather now, than to blast every livin' thing by and by; but I hadn't no idee o' this! The Lord ha' mercy! The Lord ha' mercy!”
For all that one could see through the windows was a great black sheet of driving rain, and the roar of the storm was terrible. The Ark shook. It seemed, at each successive blast, as though the walls would fall in over our heads. One could easily imagine the whole crazy structure borne onward before the resistless tempest, to take a final wild leap from the cliffs.
”Wallencamp's a gittin' all mixed up,” said Grandpa, without the faintest tinge of humor, now. ”We sha'n't know where to find ourselves when we git out o' this 'ere, ef we ever do git out on't. Lord ha' mercy!”
Madeline sat very white and still, resting her chin on her hands, her great eyes staring out.
Grandma held the two frightened children in her lap. She was rocking and singing to them in a low, crooning tone. Though she was pale and her lips trembled, there was still about her a soothing atmosphere of peace.
I was frightened, like the children. I longed to cry out as they had done; to bury my head away from the terrors somewhere, as they did in Grandma's lap.
”That was the blackest squall,” said Grandpa Keeler, afterwards; ”that ever swep' across the Cape!”
Terrible as it had been, it died quickly. The transition seemed miraculous from the sullen roar of the wind and torrent-fall of rain, to the renewed chirping of the birds, the quiet dripping of the eaves, and suns.h.i.+ne over all.
But the young peach-tree that had stood by the window of the Ark, and sent its fragrance into my little room above, lay p.r.o.ne upon the ground.
When she saw that, Grandma Keeler moaned heart-brokenly, as though it had been some fair human life stripped suddenly of its promise and left to wither fruitlessly.
There were traces of the storm everywhere. Trees that had stood isolated in the fields lay, some of them, with roots exposed; others were broken off at the trunk, left with only a branch or two, helpless figures with outstretched arms, to give a weird desolation to the landscape by and by, I thought with a shudder, when winter should come again to Wallencamp.
The fences--what remained of them from former depredations--had either fallen utterly to the ground, or a.s.sumed a strikingly precarious position.
Part of the roof of Mr. Randal's house had been blown off, and the chimneys of several of the Wallencamp houses demolished, and Grandpa's barn twisted and distorted almost beyond recognition.
That poor old gentleman put on his hat and stepped out of the door cautiously, looking about him like one in a dream.
The Ark had stood firm, apparently, in its old resting-place. Grandma and Madeline proceeded to sweep out the rain which had been driven in through the cracks, and then it was that little Henry G. came running, with a white face, to the door. He had an air of childish importance, too, as being the first to bear tidings of some strange and dreadful event, and eager to hasten to other doors.
”Where's the rest?” he gasped, seeing only me in the room. ”You tell 'em, teacher, Lute Cradlebow's drownded!” and the boy disappeared, without another word.
I was already faint from the reaction of the excitement incident to the storm, weak with the effort I had made to ”hold myself still.” I heard Grandma calling quickly, ”Child! child!” I saw her coming towards me, and then I lost consciousness.
At evening, while the sun went down over the hill by which the transfigured river flowed, Captain Sartell sat in the door of the Ark, and told the story.
The marvellous light was on his face, too. It fell, in shafts of glory, on the bright foliage of the fallen tree.
Grandma was at G.o.dfrey Cradlebow's, but Grandpa Keeler was within the Ark, and Madeline caressing her children with a new fondness. There were a few of the neighbors present; they looked neither frightened nor curious, but ineffably exalted.
”We'd got our work about done,” said Captain Sartell, speaking mechanically and with little of his customary hesitation of manner. ”As near as I calk'late, there wa'n't a half hour's more work to do on the old craft, and it had got to be sometime arter noon, but says the boys, 'Let's finish her off, now we've got so near through, and not have to come back ag'in.' They was always a cheery set--especially _him_--when they took hold of a job, to put it through.
”We'd seen them sailin' fellows go by a while before; and we knew Rollin was one of 'em. They wasn't but two, as we could see, managin' the craft; and they was full sail, clippin' it lively. I calk'late there ain't many knows this sh.o.r.e better'n me, but I wouldn't 'a' durst skirted along the adge down thar' at sech a rate, not in the finest day blowin'. First, we thought it was somebody didn't know what they was about. When we made out it was Rollin, we knew, if he _was_ drunk, he was tol'able well acquainted with the rocks along sh.o.r.e, and 'ud probably put further out when he got through showin' off. We didn't worry about 'em, nor think no more about 'em, in special. The boys didn't want to talk to rile George Olver.
”So we kep' to work, and in a minute, cheery ag'in with the hammers click, clickin'--and every now and then the boys 'ud strike up a singin'
something'. 'Beyond the River,' and 'Homeward Bound.'
”It sounded dredful purty down thar' by the water, with the water and the wideness all around sorter softenin' of it. It made a man feel curious and wishful somehow.