OUT OF THE STORM.
Ben altered his course with a great effort, and forced a passage to the
broken shore. He was too busy in preserving his boat from being dashed
upon the rocks, to remark with what eager selfishness the girl left him,
only uttering a quick ejaculation, and darting away without thanks. By
the time he could look around she had plunged into a neighboring ravine,
and he saw no more of her.
Though the current was running high, Ben had the whole force of the wind
to urge him on, and his steady seamanship made the progress up stream
less dangerous than the descent had been. But the toil was great and
every muscle of his brawny arms rose to its full strain as he bent all
his strength upon the oars. But with his greatest anxieties at rest, Ben
cared little for this. With no life but his own at stake, the tempest
was nothing to the brave man.
But it grew terrible. The boat was more than once hurled out of water.
The waves dashed over him; the wind carried off his hat and beat
fiercely against his head, sweeping the long hair over his face. Again
and again the current wheeled his boat around, drifting it back with a
force he could not resist, sometimes close to the shore, sometimes out
in the torrent of waters. It was impossible now to see his course,
except by the lightning. The entire darkness baffled him more than the
storm.
Once when the boat was seized upon and hurled backward, Ben saw
innumerable lights sweeping by in the fog between him and the shore, and
he uttered a shout of wild thanksgiving that the steamer had not run him
down. As the water heaved him to and fro, a glare of lightning revealed
this monster boat, moving downward, and--oh, horror of horrors! Mabel
Harrington, just as the vortex engulphed her. Two white arms were flung
upward. Her hair streamed in the lightning. The deathly white face was
turned shoreward.
The might of twenty men was in his arms then. He flung back the rushing
waves with his oars, and from a will fiercer than his strength, forced
his boat toward her. In a minute the darkness of death was around him.
Blasts of wind and great gushes of rain swept over him. He shouted
aloud. He beat the waters madly with his oars. He called upon God for
one more flash of lightning.
It came. He saw a distant steamer, an up-turned boat and something
darker than the foam heaving upon the waters.
"Hold on! Hold on!--I'm coming--I'm coming--it's Ben--it's Ben. Oh God,
give me light!"
He was answered. A crash of thunder--a trail of fire--and an old cedar
tree on the shore flamed up with the light he had prayed for.
It flamed up and Ben saw a man plunge from the rocks into the boiling
waters. He bent to the oar, his boat rushed through the waves, and as he
came one way, that white face moved steadily from the shore. The waters
were buffeted fiercely around it. Some mighty power seemed to sweep back
the storm from where it moved.
It disappeared, rose and sunk again. Ben pushed his boat to the spot
where he had seen Mabel disappear. His bow dashed against the little
boat already broken in twain, and its fragments broke upon the water. He
looked wildly about. The face was gone. The dark heap which he had taken
for Mabel, had disappeared. Ben's strong arms began to tremble; tears of
anguish met the beating rain, as it broke over his face. Despair seized
upon him. He dashed his oars into the bottom of the boat and stood up,
ready for a plunge. He would never go back and say that his mistress had
been suffered to drown before his face. His clasped hands were
uplifted--the boat reeled under him--he was poised for the mad plunge!
No, his hands fell. A hoarse shout broke from him.
"Here, here I am! here--away!"
He seized the oars again, looking wildly around, for the voice that had
hailed him by name, up from the deep, as it seemed. It came again, and
close by the boat that grand head appeared struggling for life.
Ben struck out his oars.
"Do not move--do not strike, or you may kill her yet!"
"Is she there? Can you hold on?" cried Ben, trembling in every limb of
his stout frame.
A hand seized one side of the boat. Close to the manly head he had seen,
was the marble face of Mabel Harrington, half veiled by tresses of wet
hair. Ben fell upon his knees, and plunging his arms into the waves,
drew her into the boat.
"For the shore--for your life!" shouted James Harrington, refusing to be
helped, but clinging to the boat. "No, no--strike out; I will hold
on--pull--pull!"
Ben took off his coat, and rolling it in a bundle, placed it under Mabel
Harrington's head. It was all he could do. The boat was a third full of
water, and he had nothing else.
"Get in--get in--or she will be drowned over again!" he pleaded, seizing
James Harrington by the shoulders, and dragging him over the side. "Get
down, keep her head out of water, and it'll take a worse storm than this
to drive me back."
Harrington fell rather than sat down, and took Mabel in his arms, close
to a heart so chilled that it had almost ceased beating. But as her cold
face fell upon his bosom, a glow of life came back to it, with a pang of
unsupportable feeling. It was not joy--it was not sorrow--but the warmth
in his veins seemed like a sweet poison, which would end in death.
He put the numb and senseless form aside with a great effort, resting
the head upon Ben's coat. Twice he attempted to speak, but his trembling
lips uttered nothing but broken moans.
"Take her," he said to Ben, "take her and I will pull the oars."
"You haven't life enough in you, sir," pleaded Ben, shrinking from the
proposal.
"I am strong again," said Harrington, placing himself on the seat and
taking the oars. "See!"
The boat plunged heavily shoreward. Ben held his mistress with a sort of
terror at the sacrilege. His brawny arms trembled around her. He turned
his face to the storm, rather than allow his eyes to rest upon her. But
James Harrington had no compassion; he still kept to the oars.
At last they shot into a point of the shore, formed by two or three
jutting rocks. Harrington dropped the oars, and the two men lifted Mabel
Harrington from the boat, and bore her to a slope of the hill. No
shelter was in sight. The sudden storm was abating, but rain still
dropped in showers from the trees.
"Where can we convey her? What shall we do?" said Harrington, looking
around in dismay. "She will perish before we can obtain warmth, if she
is not already gone."
Ben had flung down his coat. They laid her upon it. James Harrington
knelt upon the turf, and lifted her head to his knee. The face was pale
as death; purple shadows lay about the mouth, and under the eyes; her
flesh was cold as marble.
Again the deathly cold came creeping to Harrington's heart. He shuddered
from head to foot, "She is dead--she is dead!" broke from his chilled
lips.
"Oh, Mr. Harrington, Mr. Harrington, what can we do? What can we do?"
groaned Ben, clasping his huge hands, and crying like a child over the
poor lady. "She isn't dead--don't! That word is enough to kill a poor
miserable feller, as wanted to die for her and couldn't."
His only answer was a low moan from James Harrington.
"Is there no house, no living soul near to give us help?" said James
Harrington, lifting his white face to that of Ben Benson, while his
voice shook, and his arms trembled around the cold form they half
supported, half embraced. "If there is a spark of life left it will go
out in this cold--if she is dead--"
"Don't! oh, Mister James, don't!" cried Ben wringing his hands with
fresh violence, "them's cruel words to stun a poor fellow's heart
with--she ain't dead, God don't take his angels up to glory in that 'ere
way!"
James laid Mabel reverently from his arms, and stood up casting anxious
glances through the storm.
"There is a light, yonder upon the hill-side,--you can just see it
through the drifting clouds--go, Ben, climb for your life and bring us
help!"
Ben stooped down, clapped a hand on each knee and took an observation.
"There is a light, that's sartin," he said joyfully, settling himself in
his wet clothes and making a start for the hill; but directly he turned
back again.
"If she's so near gone as you speak on, Mister James, it wouldn't be of
no use for me to go up there for help--she'd be chilled through and
through, till there was no bringing her back, long afore I could
half-way climb the hill!"
"I fear it, I fear it!" said Harrington, looking mournfully down on the
white face at his feet, "God help her!"
"See," said Ben stretching forth his hand towards the burning cedar,
"God Almighty has gin us light and fire close by--the grass is crisped
and dried up all around that tree. What if we carry the madam there?
I'll go up the hill with a heart in it arter that!"
Ben stooped as if about to take the cold form of his mistress in his
arms, but as his hands touched her garments some inward restraint fell
upon him, and he drew back, looking wistfully from Harrington to the
prostrate woman he dared not raise from the earth even in her extremity.
As he stooped a strange light had flashed into James Harrington's eyes,
and he made a motion as if to push the poor boatman aside.
Ben did not see this, as we have said, his retreat was a voluntary
impulse. He saw James Harrington take up the form he dared not touch,
with a feeling of deep humiliation, submitting to the abrupt and stern
manner which accompanied the action, as a well deserved rebuke for his
boldness.
A small ravine separated the point of land occupied by the little party
from the burning cedar, and towards this Harrington bore his silent
burden. His cheeks grew deadly pale from a feeling deeper than fear or
cold, and his eyes flashed back the gleams of light that reached him
from the burning tree with a wild splendor that no mortal man had ever
seen in them before.
He held Mabel closer and closer to his heart, which rose and heaved
beneath its burden; his breath came in broken volumes from his chest,
and an insane belief seized upon him, that though dead he could arouse
her from that icy sleep, by forcing the breath of his own abundant
existence through her lips.
Fired by this wild thought he bowed his head nearer and nearer to the
pallid face upon his shoulder. But the voice of Ben Benson brought him
back to sanity again.
"Be careful, sir! The hollow is full of ruts and broken stones! She is
too heavy--You stagger and reel like a craft that has lost her helm!
Steady, sir--steady, or she'll be hurt!"
James Harrington stopped suddenly, as if a war trumpet had checked his
progress. His face changed in the burning light. His arms relaxed around
the form they had clasped so firmly a moment before.
"Take her!" he said, with an imploring look. "Take her! I am very weak.
You see how I falter--Take her, Benson. She is not heavy, it is only I
that have lost all strength!"
Ben reached forth his brawny arms, as we sometimes see a great
school-boy receive a baby sister, and folded them reverently around the
form which Harrington relinquished with a sigh of unutterable
humiliation.
Ben moved forward with a quick firm tread, following Harrington, who
went before trampling down the undergrowth, and putting aside the
drooping branches from his path.