Part 11

She colored angrily, but held out her hands. Landless lifted her down and steadied her to her seat in the stern. She thanked him coldly, and began at once to talk to Regulus with the playful familiarity of a child. Regulus grinned delight; he had been "'lil Missy's" slave from her childhood. Landless untied the boat from the piles and pushed her off; Regulus, who was to steer, pulled the tiller towards him, and the little Bluebird glided from the wharf, made a wide and graceful sweep, and proceeded leisurely down the inlet towards the waters of the great bay.

Landless seated himself in the bow, and turned his face away from the group in the stern. Patricia leaned back amidst her cushions, and opened a book; Darkeih, upon the other side of the rudder, held a whispered flirtation with Regulus, squatting at her feet, the tiller in his hand. There was but little wind, but what there was came from the land, and the Bluebird moved steadily though listlessly down the inlet, between the velvet marshes. The water broke against the sides of the boat with a languid murmur. It was very hot, and the sky above was of a steely, unclouded blue that hurt the eyes. Only in the southwest the line of cloud hills was erecting itself into an Alpine range. The glare of the sun upon the white pages of her book dazzled Patricia's eyes; the heat and the lazy swaying motion made her drowsy; With a sigh of oppression she closed her book, and taking her fan from Darkeih, laid it across her face, and curled herself among her cushions.

"I will sleep awhile," she said to her hand-maiden, and serenely glided into slumberland.

She was in a balcony with Sir Charles Carew, looking down upon a fantastic procession that wound endlessly on, with flaunting banners, and to the sound of kettle-drums and trumpets, when she was aroused by Landless' voice. She opened her eyes and looked up from her nest of cushions to see him standing above her.

"What is it?" she asked frigidly.

"I grieve to waken you, madam, but there is a heavy squall coming up."

She sat up and looked about her. The Bluebird had left the inlet and was rising and falling with the long oily swell of the vast sheet of water that stretched before them to a horizon of vivid blue. North and east the water met the sky; a mile to the westward was the low wooded shore which they were skirting.

"The sun is shining," said Patricia, bewildered. "The sky is blue."

"Look behind you."

She turned and uttered an exclamation. The Alpine range had vanished, and a monstrous pall of gray-black cloud was being slowly drawn upward and across the smiling heaven. Even as she looked, it blotted out the sun.

"We had better make for the shore at once," said Landless. "We can reach it before the storm breaks and can find shelter for you until it is over."

Patricia exclaimed: "Why, we cannot be more than three miles from Rosemead! Surely we can reach it before that cloud overtakes us!"

"I think not, madam."

"Regulus!" cried his mistress imperiously. "We can reach Rosemead before that storm breaks, can we not?"

Among other amiable qualities, Regulus numbered a happy willingness to please, even at the expense of truth.

"Sho-ly, 'lil Missy," he said with emphasis.

"And it will not be much of a squall, besides, will it, Regulus?"

"No, 'lil Missy, not much ob squall," answered the obliging Regulus.

"There is much wind in it," said Landless. "Look at those white clouds scudding across the black; and these squalls strike with suddenness and fury. I may put the boat about, madam?"

"Certainly not. Regulus, who must know the Chesapeake and its squalls much better than you possibly can, says there is no danger. I have no mind to be set ashore in these woods with night coming on and Indians or wolves prowling around."

"I beg that you will be advised by me, madam."

She looked at him as she had done that day in the master's room. "Is it that you are _afraid_ of a Virginia squall? If so, you will have to conquer your tremor. Regulus, keep the boat as it is."

Landless went back to his seat in the bow, with tightened lips. The wind freshened, coming in hot little puffs, and the Bluebird slid more swiftly over the low hills. The water turned to a livid green and the air slowly darkened. Across the black pall, looming higher and higher, shot a jagged streak of fierce gold, followed by a low rumble of thunder. A mass of gray-white, fantastically piled clouds whirled lip from the eastern horizon to meet the vast blank sullen sheet overhead. There came a more vivid flash and a louder roll of thunder.

Landless walked aft and took the tiller from Regulus' hand, motioning him forward to the place he had himself occupied. The negro stared, but went with his accustomed docility. Patricia sat upright in indignant surprise.

"What are you doing?"

"I am about to head the boat for the shore," suiting the action to the word.

Her eyes blazed. "Did you not hear me say that I wished to proceed to Rosemead?"

"Yes, madam, I did."

"I order you, sir--"

"And I choose to disobey."

"I shall report you to Colonel Verney."

"As you please, madam."

From the prow, where he had been taking observations, Regulus cried in a startled voice: "De win's comin'! De win 's comin' mighty quick!"

Landless thrust the tiller into Patricia's hands. "Keep it there, just where it is, for your life!" he cried authoritatively, and bounded forward to where Regulus was already struggling with the sail. They got it in and lashed to the mast just in time, for, with the shriek of a thousand demons, the squall whirled itself upon them. In an instant they were enveloped in a blinding horror of furious wind and rain, glare of lightning and incessant, ear-splitting thunder. A leaden darkness, illuminated only by the lightning, settled around them, and the air grew suddenly cold. Beneath the whip of the wind the Chesapeake woke from slumber, stirred, and rose in fury. The Bluebird danced dizzily upon white crests or swooped into black and yawning chasms. Steadying himself by the thwarts, Landless went back to Patricia, sitting pale and with clasped hands, but making no sound. Darkeih, with a moan of fear, had thrown herself down at her mistress' feet, and was hiding her face in her skirts. Landless took a scarf from among the pile of cushions, and wrapped it around Patricia. "'T is a poor protection against wet and cold," he said, "but it is better than nothing."

"Thank you," she said then, with an effort. "Do you think this squall will last long?"

"I cannot tell, madam. It is rather a hurricane than a squall. But we must do the best we can."

As he spoke there came a fresh access of wind with a glare of intolerable light. The mast bent like a reed, snapped off clear to the foot and fell inward, the loosened beam striking Regulus upon the head, and bearing him down with it. The boat careened violently, and half filled with water. Darkeih screamed, and Patricia sprang to her feet, but sat down again at Landless' stern command, "Sit still! She will right in a moment."

He lifted and flung overboard the mass of splintered wood and flapping cloth, then fell to bailing with all his might, for the danger of swamping was imminent. Presently Patricia touched him upon the arm. "I will bail if you will see to Regulus," she said, in a low, strained voice. "I think he is dead."

Landless resigned the pail into her hands and lifted the negro's head and shoulders from the water in which he was lying, pillowing them upon the stern seat. He was unconscious, and bleeding from a cut on the forehead.

"He is not dead nor like to die," Landless said. "He will revive before long."

The girl gave a long, quivering sigh of relief. Landless finished the bailing and sat down at her feet.

Some time later she asked faintly: "Do you not think the worst is over now?"

"I am afraid not," he answered gently. "There is a lull now, but I am afraid the storm is but gathering its forces. But we will hope for the best--"

Another flash and crash cut him short. It was followed by rain that fell, not in drops, but in sheets. The wind, which had been blowing a heavy gale, rose suddenly into a tornado. With it rose the sea. The masses of water, hissing and smoking under the furious pelting of the rain, flung themselves upon the hapless Bluebird, laboring heavily in the trough of the waves, or staggering over their summits. A constant glare lit the heaving, tossing world of waters, and the air became one roar of wind, rain, and thunder.

Darkeih crouched moaning at her mistress' feet Regulus lay unconscious, breathing heavily. Suddenly, with a quick intake of his breath, Landless seized Patricia, pulled her down into the bottom of the boat, and held her there.

"I see," she said in a low, awed voice. "It is Death!"

Through the glare a long green wall bore down upon them. The Bluebird leaped to meet it. It lifted her up, up to meet the lightning, then hurled her into black depths, and passed on, leaving her staggering in the trough, water-logged and helpless.

*CHAPTER XVI*

*THE FACE IN THE DARK*

Patricia lifted her white face from her hands. "We rode that dreadful wave?" she cried incredulously.

"By God's mercy, yes," said Landless gravely.

"Is there any hope for us?"

Landless hesitated. "Tell me the truth," she said imperiously.

"We are in desperate case, madam. The boat is half filled with water. Another such sea will sink us."

"Why do you not bail the boat?"

"The bucket is gone; the tiller also."

She shivered, and Darkeih began to wail aloud. Landless laid a heavy hand upon the latter's shoulder. "Silence!" he said sternly. "Here! I shall lay Regulus' head in your lap, and you are to watch over him and not to think of yourself. There 's a brave wench!"

Darkeih's lamentations subsided into a low sobbing, and Landless turned to her mistress.

"Try to keep up your courage, madam," he said. "Our peril is great; but while there is life there is hope."

"I am not afraid," she said. "I--" The pitching of the boat threw her against Landless, and he put his arm about her. "You must let me hold you, madam," he said quietly. She shrank away from his touch, saying breathlessly, "No, oh no! See! I can hold quite well by the gunwale." He acquiesced in silence, only lifting her into a more secure position. "I thank you," she said humbly.

The storm continued to rage with unabated fury. Flash and detonation succeeded flash and detonation; the rain poured in torrents: and the wind whooped on the angry sea like a demon of destruction. The Bluebird pitched and tossed at the mercy of the great waves that combed above her. Time passed, and to the darkness of the storm was added the darkness of the night. The occupants of the boat, drenched by the rain and the seas she had shipped, shivered with cold. Regulus began to stir and mutter. "He is coming to himself," Landless cried to Darkeih. "When you see that he is conscious, make him lie still. He must not move about."

"Do you know where we are?" asked Patricia.

"No, madam; but I fear that the wind is driving us out into the bay."

"Ah!"

She said it with a sob, for a sudden vision of home flashed across the cold and darkness; and presently Landless could hear that she was weeping.

The sound went to his heart. "I would God could help you, madam," he said gently. "Take comfort! You are in the hands of One who holds the sea in the hollow of His hand."

In a little while she was quiet. There passed another long interval of silent endurance, broken by Patricia's saying piteously, "My hands are so numbed with cold that I cannot hold to the side of the boat And my arms are bruised with striking against it."

Without a word Landless put his arm around her, and held her steady amidst the tossings of the boat. "You are shivering with cold!" he said. "If I had but something to wrap you in!"

She drooped against him, and the lightning showed him her face, still and white, with parted lips, and long lashes sweeping her marble cheek.

"Madam, madam!" he cried roughly. "You must not swoon! You must not!"

With a strong effort she rallied. "I will try to be brave," she said plaintively. "I am not frightened,--not very much. But oh! I am cold and tired!"

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 nigger 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 ship 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 amusement in the languid eyes and in the curves of the lips. The hatches were battened down upon the cargo of misery, and the ship with its brutal captain and its handful of gold-laced, dicing, swearing passengers vanished.... He saw a sandy, grass-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 Hull, who had fought at Worcester beneath his father's eye; the man who had lain in prison and in the noisome hold of the ship, 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 passion 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, Godfrey 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, massa?" 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 shore 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 shore.

Ten minutes later Landless, breathless and exhausted, staggered from out the hell of pounding waves and blinding, stinging spray on to the shore. 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 God, madam."

"And I thank God," she answered, in the same tone.

He tried to shield her from the wind with his body. "It is frightful," he said, "that you should be exposed to such a night. I pray God that you take no harm."

"Would it not be more sheltered higher up the shore, under those trees?"

"Perhaps, but I fear to risk you there with the lightning so near. Later, when the storm subsides, we will try it."

He seated himself so as to screen her as much as possible from wind and rain, and a silence fell upon the party so suddenly snatched from death. Regulus stretched himself upon the sand and pulled Darkeih down beside him. Within a few minutes they were both asleep. The white man and woman sat side by side without speaking, watching the storm.

By degrees it raved itself out. The rain fell in less and less volume, the lightning became infrequent, the thunder pealed less loudly, and the wind died from a hurricane into a breeze. In two hours' time from the swamping of the boat the booming of the sea, and a ragged mass of cloud, lit by an occasional flash and slowly falling away from a pale and watery moon, were the only evidences of the tornado which had raged so lately.

"The storm is over," said Patricia, breaking a long silence.

"Yes," said Landless. "You have nothing to fear now. Would you not like to walk a little? You must be sadly chilled and weary with long sitting."

"Yes, I would," she answered, with a sigh of relief. "Let us walk towards those trees, and see if forest or water be beyond them."

He helped her to her feet, and they left the slaves sleeping upon the ground, and moved slowly, for she was numbed with cold, towards the fringe of pines.

Landless walked beside her without speaking. A while ago she had been simply a woman in danger of death--something for him to protect and to save. He had well nigh forgotten: he knew that she had quite forgotten. She was safe now, and was become once more the lady of the manor to whose soil he was fettered, he had remembered, and she was beginning to remember, for presently she said timidly and sweetly, but with condescension in her voice;--

"I am not ungrateful for all that you have done for me to-night, for saving my life. And, trust me, you will not find your mas--my father, ungrateful either. We will find some way to reward--"