_Bruce._ “Hallo!”
_Foremost Figure._ “Why! What’s this!”
_Bruce._ “Dr. Porter!!!”
_Foremost Figure._ “Bruce Rawdon!!!”
For a few moments both parties were overwhelmed with utter bewilderment
and a total prostration of all their faculties. This amazing and
incomprehensible reunion of those who had parted five hours ago in the
wild woods, by the lofty precipice and the thundering surf, going in
exactly opposite directions, yet coming together in darkness and fog,
was a thing which might well reduce them to complete stupefaction.
Then there arose a general uproar of questions, each party asking the
other where they had been, and where they supposed themselves to be now,
and where they thought they were going.
“This is a most incomprehensible thing!” said the doctor.
“How long have you been on the road, sir?”
“Not over a quarter of an hour.”
“Have you been in the woods all the time?”
“Yes, walking steadily in this direction.”
“And could you manage to keep a straight course?”
“O, yes.”
“You didn’t walk along the cliff--did you, sir?”
“O, no.”
“I don’t see how you managed to go on straight when you were in the
woods.”
“O, I managed by my eye,” said the doctor, calmly. “I also tried to
correct that tendency to swerve to the right that you spoke of, and I
think I succeeded. You see, I found I was very much farther away from
Hall’s Harbor than I supposed. In fact, your conjecture must have been
right, and we were nearer Scott’s Bay by a great deal than we were to
Hall’s Harbor. We had swerved very much to the right. As I went on I
became convinced of this, and tried constantly and most carefully to
guard against it. I succeeded therefore in going almost in a perfectly
straight line. But our march was a very fatiguing one, I must confess.
It grew dark, too, and we were just on the point of giving up, when we
came to a pasture field, and then found the road. We didn’t see any
houses near, and couldn’t find how far away any house might be. At first
I thought of going to Hall’s Harbor, but finally I concluded to turn to
the left, and go on towards Cornwallis. But you, how did you happen to
lose your course so completely? Why, you’ve made a complete circle. You
must have been turning to the right ever since you left. You’ve got into
the Hall’s Harbor road, and are now walking straight towards Hall’s
Harbor. What a most extraordinary and most absurd situation! I wouldn’t
have believed this to be possible, had it not been first for my own
mistake to-day, and now for this one of yours. But it seems to me,
Bruce, that your circle has been more complete than mine was. What a
tremendous march you must have made!”
Bruce for a few minutes said nothing. The doctor’s quiet way of
informing him about his situation bewildered him more than the first
discovery had done. A “tremendous” circuit it must indeed have been. How
had they managed to go so fast, and reach the road before the doctor’s
party? It must have been that chase after Pat which put them astray.
After that they had lost all idea of their way, and had wandered on
blindly, not knowing where they were going, and for that matter not
caring very much, either.
“But are you sure that this is the Hall’s Harbor road?” he asked at
length.
“Why, yes--of course it is. It ought to be--we’ve come far enough to get
to it. What did you think it was?”
“Why, we thought it was the Scott’s Bay road.”
“The Scott’s Bay road!” cried the doctor, and burst into a hearty fit of
laughter.
“Well, sir,” said Bruce, “to tell the truth, we got utterly lost. Pat
began chasing a porcupine, and we chased Pat, and followed him wherever
he went. At last we lost him. So then we didn’t think about reaching
the road at all, but only about finding him. We went on in the direction
which he seemed to have taken, and so we came to this road. It was the
porcupine that led us here.
“The porcupine,” said the doctor; and he appeared so amused at this
idea, that Bruce had to tell him the whole story.
“The fact is,” said the doctor, thoughtfully, after hearing this story,
“what you ought to have done is this: You ought at all hazards to have
followed the line of the cliff. That would have brought you to Scott’s
Bay in a little more than an hour. You could then have gone to the house
where the horses were left, and by this time you would have been in
comfortable quarters, pitying us poor wanderers.”
“Well,” said Bruce, “we tried to keep close by the cliff, but it ran off
in such a direction that we left it, and went in what we thought a truer
course.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed the doctor. “That is always the way. The cliff was
right, but you were wrong. The cliff did not turn away from you, but you
turned away from the cliff. It was all that fatal tendency to turn to
the right. Now, I was on my guard; but you, who gave me that warning,
forgot all about it yourself. But come, it won’t do to stand here all
night talking. We are now about half way over the mountain. We ought
soon to begin to descend towards Cornwallis. There’s a man who lives on
this road that I’m acquainted with,--a Mr. Smalley,--and his house
can’t be very far away. We can get something to eat there at least, and
accommodations for the night. But I prefer getting wagons and driving
over to where we left our own conveyances. However, we can see about
that when we get to Smalley’s.”
The whole party now walked on, and the boys mingled with one another,
questioning each other about the journey. The doctor’s party had
suffered fearfully. They were all foot-sore, and their clothes were
badly torn. They had gone through swamps and brushwood, and over stones
and fallen trees. They were fearfully fatigued, and were now only
sustained by the prospect of soon reaching the end of their journey.
All this was a great puzzle to Bruce’s party, who were not nearly so
fatigued; and they couldn’t understand how they could have gone so much
farther than the doctor’s party without feeling so worn out as their
friends were. They attributed this, however, first to the fact that
the doctor had gone in one perfectly straight course, regardless of
obstacles; and secondly, to the other fact, that their journey had been
beguiled by Pat’s adventure with the porcupine, which first afforded
them amusement, and afterwards, when he was lost, created such an
excitement that they forgot their toils.
After walking some distance farther, the road, to their great delight,
began to descend.
“We’re going down to Cornwallis,” said the doctor, joyously. “We’re very
much farther on than I supposed. We are evidently far beyond Smalley’s.
I see how it is. In my anxiety to avoid swerving to the right, I have
fallen, as you said, Bruce, into the opposite extreme, and have actually
swerved to the left. That accounts for the immense length of our
journey. Well, now that it’s over, I’m glad that it happened so. It
brings us all the nearer to our destination. At the foot of the hill
lives Mr. Atkins, who will give us far better accommodation than
Smalley. One mile more, boys, only one mile, and then we’ll have rest.”
The doctor’s encouraging words cheered all the boys, and the fact that
they were actually descending the hill, and were thus every moment
drawing nearer to their destination, had an additional influence in
giving them fresh energy.
So they descended farther and farther, and now kept on the lookout more
vigilantly than ever for the welcome lights of some houses.
“It’s a long descent,” said the doctor, “but every step is bringing us
nearer to Atkins’s; so keep your courage up, boys, for we’ll soon be
there now.”
On they went, and descended lower and lower, till at last they seemed to
have reached the plain, for the road became level, and went on straight,
without any more windings.
At length there appeared a faint light not far away on the left.
“That must be Atkins’s,” said the doctor. “But how very thick the fog is
even here! I never knew it so thick in Cornwallis. And the air is just
like that of the sea-shore. It is very seldom that it is so on this side
of the mountain.”
“I suppose it’s the strong southerly wind,” said Bart.
“Yes, I dare say.”
“The wind seems to strike us here from a very odd direction. It must
come across the Basin of Minas. It’s just as though it came from the
east.”
“O, we can’t tell,” said the doctor. “This road winds so that we get it
sometimes in our faces, and sometimes in our backs.”
“It must be after nine,” said Bruce.
“Yes,” said the doctor; “and I dare say we’ve passed several houses on
the road. The people here are not very liberal in the use of candles.
They sit around the kitchen fire till about nine o’clock, and then go
to bed. That’s the reason why we have not seen any lights. There must be
quite a number of houses along here.”
By this time they had come in front of the house. It stood about a dozen
yards from the road. The light proceeded from a small, lower window. The
house was only a cottage, and the dim outline of a barn could be seen a
little farther on.
“This does not look like Atkins’s,” said the doctor, after he had
scanned the cottage and the barn. “Atkins’s is very much larger than
this, and is a different looking place altogether. I don’t think we can
have passed it. No, it must be farther on. At any rate, we can ask here,
and they can tell us exactly how far we have yet to go. I’m sorry it
isn’t Atkins’s, though, for I fully expected to be there. Besides, we
all want rest.”
The doctor looked once more at the house, and then at the barn. As they
stood there, thus looking in silence, there came to their ears a very
peculiar sound, which made every one start.
It was a long, rolling sound, made up of the rush of many waters, such
as can be heard nowhere else but upon the sea-shore--that peculiar noise
of gathering floods, such as is heard when the sea throws forth its
waves towards the land, to curl up, foaming, and break upon the strand.
Here it arose amid this darkness,--that peculiar, that unmistakable
sound,--with its gathering waters, its foam, its roll, and its crash as
the uplifted waters broke,--the sound that can be made by the surf, and
the surf alone.
But what did it mean?
What was the meaning of the surf breaking thus upon the inner side of
the North Mountain, far inland, on the plains of Cornwallis?
Were the dikes broken down? Was this some flood pouring in over
the country to overwhelm them? Was the raging sea now rolling, in
undisturbed possession of its ancient bed, over all the green valleys of
this lately smiling plain? Was there the terrific visitation of a deluge
here in this peaceful country? and were all the people now flying from
the horrors of an inundation?
What did it mean?
Up to this moment there had not been a doubt in the minds of any of them
that they were near Atkins’s, somewhere in Cornwallis, on the Hall’s
Harbor road. The doctor’s quiet positiveness, the perfect certainty with
which he had spoken, and the minute acquaintance which he seemed to
have with every part of their past and present journey, all conspired
to impress upon the minds of the boys the very idea of their possible
locality which was in his own mind; and thus it happened that it was
while they fully believed themselves entering upon a wide plain that
they suddenly heard the thunder of the surf upon the shore.
The doctor heard this as plainly as any of them, of course, and all the
thoughts which came to them came to him also none the less vividly. But
he said not a single word.. He stood mute, and waited for a few moments
longer, as though doubting the evidence of his senses.
Once more the sound arose. The waters gathered themselves together, they
rolled forward, they heaped themselves upward, they foamed, and then
they broke upon the shore. Thus, wave after wave, the surf came on, and
spoke of the presence of the sea!
It was enough.
“I don’t know where in the world we have got to,” ejaculated the doctor,
at last.
“It can’t be Cornwallis,” said Bruce.
“We must be on the shore of Minas Basin,” said Bogud.
“I think it’s Pereau,” said Bart.
“I don’t know where it is,” said the doctor; “but, Bruce, I shouldn’t be
surprised if you should prove right a second time. But the best way is
to go and ask.”
Saying this, the doctor hurried to the door of the cottage. As they drew
near, a strong smell of fish arose, and formed a new and striking
proof of the presence of the sea. Reaching the door, the doctor knocked
loudly, and all the boys gathered round to hear the result of his
inquiry, and learn their fate.
At first there was no response.
The doctor knocked again.