for a mere fool's fancy, I will show you what I think of it. You knew
the condition of that boat, and I did not," said Keith, sternly, as the
two men stood at last on the beach in front of the lighthouse. The
Sister had gone within, glad to feel land underfoot once more. She had
sat quietly in her place all the way, afraid of the water, of the wind,
of everything, but entirely unconscious of the real danger that menaced
them. For the little craft would not mind her helm; her mast slipped
about erratically; the planking at the bow seemed about to give way
altogether; and they were on a lee shore, with the tide coming in, and
the surf beating roughly on the beach. They were both good sailors, but
it had taken all they knew to bring the boat safely to the lighthouse.
"To tell the truth, I did not think she was so crippled," said
Carrington. "She really is a good boat for her size."
"Very," said Keith sarcastically.
But the younger man clung to his opinion; and, in order to verify it, he
set himself to work repairing the little craft. You would have supposed
his daily bread depended upon her being made seaworthy, by the way he
labored. She was made over from stem to stern: a new mast, a new sail;
and, finally, scarlet and green paint were brought over from the
village, and out she came as brilliant as a young paroquet. Then
Carrington took to sailing in her. Proud of his handy work, he sailed up
and down, over to the reef, and up the inlet, and even persuaded Melvyna
to go with him once, accompanied by the meek little Sister.
"Why shouldn't you both learn how to manage her?" he said in his
enthusiasm. "She's as easy to manage as a child--"
"And as easy to tip over," replied Melvyna, screwing up her lips tightly
and shaking her head. "You don't catch me out in her again, sure's as my
name's Sawyer."
For Melvyna always remained a Sawyer in her own mind, in spite of her
spouse's name; she could not, indeed, be anything else--_noblesse
oblige_. But the Sister, obedient as usual, bent her eyes in turn upon
the ropes, the mast, the sail, and the helm, while Carrington, waxing
eloquent over his favorite science, delivered a lecture upon their uses,
and made her experiment a little to see if she comprehended. He used the
simplest words for her benefit, words of one syllable, and unconsciously
elevated his voice somewhat, as though that would make her understand
better; her wits seemed to him always of the slowest. The Sister
followed his directions, and imitated his motions with painstaking
minuteness. She did very well until a large porpoise rolled up his dark,
glistening back close alongside, when, dropping the sail-rope with a
scream, she crouched down at Melvyna's feet and hid her face in her
veil. Carrington from that day could get no more passengers for his
paroquet boat. But he sailed up and down alone in his little craft, and,
when that amusement palled, he took the remainder of the scarlet and
green paint and adorned the shells of various sea-crabs and other
crawling things, so that the little Sister was met one afternoon by a
whole procession of unearthly creatures, strangely variegated,
proceeding gravely in single file down the beach from the pen where they
had been confined. Keith pointed out to her, however, the probability of
their being much admired in their own circles as long as the hues
lasted, and she was comforted.
They strolled down the beach now every afternoon, sometimes two,
sometimes three, sometimes four when Melvyna had no cooking to watch, no
bread to bake; for she rejected with scorn the omnipresent hot biscuit
of the South, and kept her household supplied with light loaves in spite
of the difficulties of yeast. Sister St. Luke had learned to endure the
crabs, but she still fled from the fiddlers when they strayed over from
their towns in the marsh; she still went carefully around the great
jelly-fish sprawling on the beach, and regarded from a safe distance the
beautiful blue Portuguese men-of-war, stranded unexpectedly on the
dangerous shore, all their fair voyagings over. Keith collected for her
the brilliant sea-weeds, little flecks of color on the white sand, and
showed her their beauties; he made her notice all the varieties of
shells, enormous conches for the tritons to blow, and beds of wee pink
ovals and cornucopias, plates and cups for the little web-footed
fairies. Once he came upon a sea-bean.
"It has drifted over from one of the West Indian islands," he said,
polishing it with his handkerchief--"one of the islands--let us say
Miraprovos--a palmy tropical name, bringing up visions of a volcanic
mountain, vast cliffs, a tangled gorgeous forest, and the soft lapping
wash of tropical seas. Is it not so, señora?"
But the señora had never heard of the West Indian Islands. Being told,
she replied: "As you say it, it is so. There is, then, much land in the
world?"
"If you keep the sea-bean for ever, good will come," said Keith, gravely
presenting it; "but, if after having once accepted it you then lose it,
evil will fall upon you."
The Sister received the amulet with believing reverence. "I will lay it
up before the shrine of Our Lady," she said, carefully placing it in the
little pocket over her heart, hidden among the folds of her gown, where
she kept her most precious treasures--a bead of a rosary that had
belonged to some saint who lived somewhere some time, a little faded
prayer copied in the handwriting of a young nun who had died some years
before and whom she had dearly loved, and a list of her own most vicious
faults, to be read over and lamented daily; crying evils such as a
perverse and insubordinate bearing, a heart froward and evil, gluttonous
desires of the flesh, and a spirit of murderous rage. These were her own
ideas of herself, written down at the convent. Had she not behaved
herself perversely to the Sister Paula, with whom one should be always
mild on account of the affliction which had sharpened her tongue? Had
she not wrongfully coveted the cell of the novice Felipa, because it
looked out upon the orange walk? Had she not gluttonously longed for
more of the delectable marmalade made by the aged Sanchita? And, worse
than all, had she not, in a spirit of murderous rage, beat the yellow
cat with a palm-branch for carrying off the young doves, her especial
charge? "Ah, my sins are great indeed," she sighed daily upon her knees,
and smote her breast with tears.
Keith watched the sea-bean go into the little heart-pocket almost with
compunction. Many of these amulets of the sea, gathered during his
winter rambles, had he bestowed with formal warning of their magic
powers, and many a fair hand had taken them, many a soft voice had
promised to keep them "for ever." But he well knew they would be mislaid
and forgotten in a day. The fair ones well knew it too, and each knew
that the other knew, so no harm was done. But this sea-bean, he thought,
would have a different fate--laid up in some little nook before the
shrine, a witness to the daily prayers of the simple-hearted little
Sister. "I hope they may do it good," he thought vaguely. Then,
reflecting that even the most depraved bean would not probably be much
affected by the prayers, he laughed off the fancy, yet did not quite
like to think, after all, that the prayers were of no use. Keith's
religion, however, was in the primary rocks.
Far down the beach they came upon a wreck, an old and long hidden relic
of the past. The low sand-bluff had caved away suddenly and left a clean
new side, where, imbedded in the lower part, they saw a ponderous mast.
"An old Spanish galleon," said Keith, stooping to examine the remains.
"I know it by the curious bolts. They ran ashore here, broadside on, in
one of those sudden tornadoes they have along this coast once in a
while, I presume. Singular! This was my very place for lying in the sun
and letting the blaze scorch me with its clear scintillant splendor. I
never imagined I was lying on the bones of this old Spaniard."
"God rest the souls of the sailors!" said the Sister, making the sign of
the cross.
"They have been in--wherever they are, let us say, for about three
centuries now," observed Keith, "and must be used to it, good or bad."
"Nay; but purgatory, señor."
"True. I had forgotten that," said Keith.
One morning there came up a dense, soft, southern-sea fog, "The kind you
can cut with a knife," Carrington said. It lasted for days, sweeping out
to sea at night on the land breeze, and lying in a gray bank low down on
the horizon, and then rolling in again in the morning enveloping the
water and the island in a thick white cloud which was not mist and did
not seem damp even, so freshly, softly salt was the feeling it gave to
the faces that went abroad in it. Carrington and Keith, of course, must
needs be out in it every moment of the time. They walked down the beach
for miles, hearing the muffled sound of the near waves, but not seeing
them. They sailed in it not knowing whither they went, and they drifted
out at sunset and watched the land breeze lift it, roll it up, and carry
it out to sea, where distant ships on the horizon line, bound southward,
and nearer ones, sailing northward with the Gulf Stream, found
themselves enveloped and bothered by their old and baffling foe. They
went over to the reef every morning, these two, and bathed in the fog,
coming back by sense of feeling, as it were, and landing not
infrequently a mile below or above the lighthouse; then what appetites
they had for breakfast! And, if it was not ready, they roamed about,
roaring like young lions. At least that is what Melvyna said one morning
when Carrington had put his curly head into her kitchen door six times
in the course of one half hour.
The Sister shrank from the sea fog; she had never seen one before, and
she said it was like a great soft white creature that came in on wings,
and brooded over the earth. "Yes, beautiful, perhaps," she said in reply
to Keith, "but it is so strange--and--and--I know not how to say it--but
it seems like a place for spirits to walk, and not of the mortal kind."
They were wandering down the beach, where Keith had lured her to listen
to the sound of the hidden waves. At that moment Carrington loomed into
view coming toward them. He seemed of giant size as he appeared, passed
them, and disappeared again into the cloud behind, his voice sounding
muffled as he greeted them. The Sister shrank nearer to her companion as
the figure had suddenly made itself visible. "Do you know it is a wonder
to me how you have ever managed to live so far," said Keith smiling.
"But it was not far," said the little nun. "Nothing was ever far at the
dear convent, but everything was near, and not of strangeness to make
one afraid; the garden wall was the end. There we go not outside, but
our walk is always from the lime-tree to the white rose-bush and back
again. Everything we know there--not roar of waves, not strong wind, not
the thick, white air comes to give us fear, but all is still and at
peace. At night I dream of the organ, and of the orange-trees, and of
the doves. I wake, and hear only the sound of the great water below."
"You will go back," said Keith.
He had begun to pity her lately, for her longing was deeper than he had
supposed. It had its roots in her very being. He had studied her and
found it so.
"She will die of pure homesickness if she stays here much longer," he
said to Carrington. "What do you think of our writing down to that old
convent and offering--of course unknown to her--to pay the little she
costs them, if they will take her back?"
"All right," said Carrington. "Go ahead."
He was making a larger sail for his paroquet boat. "If none of you will
go out in her, I might as well have all the sport I can," he said.
"Sport to consist in being swamped?" Keith asked.
"By no means, croaker. Sport to consist in shooting over the water like
a rocket; I sitting on the tilted edge, watching the waves, the winds,
and the clouds, and hearing the water sing as we rush along."
Keith took counsel with no one else, not even with Melvyna, but
presently he wrote his letter and carried it himself over to the village
to mail. He did good deeds like that once in a while, "to help
humanity," he said. They were tangible always; like the primary rocks.
At length one evening the fog rolled out to sea for good and all, at
least as far as that shore was concerned. In the morning there stood the
lighthouse, and the island, and the reef, just the same as ever. They
had almost expected to see them altered, melted a little.
"Let us go over to the reef, all of us, and spend the day," said Keith.
"It will do us good to breathe the clear air, and feel the brilliant,
dry, hot sunshine again."
"Hear the man!" said Melvyna laughing. "After trying to persuade us all
those days that he liked that sticky fog too!"
"Mme. Gonsalvez, we like a lily; but is that any reason why we may not
also like a rose?"
"Neither of 'em grows on this beach as I'm aware of," answered Melvyna
dryly.
Then Carrington put in his voice, and carried the day. Women never
resisted Carrington long, but yielded almost unconsciously to the
influence of his height and his strength, and his strong, hearty will. A
subtiler influence over them, however, would have waked resistance, and
Carrington himself would have been conquered far sooner (and was
conquered later) by one who remained unswayed by those influences, to
which others paid involuntary obeisance.
Pedro had gone to the village for his supplies and his two days of mild
Minorcan dissipation, and Melvyna, beguiled and cajoled by the chaffing
of the two young men, at last consented, and not only packed the
lunch-basket with careful hand, but even donned for the occasion her
"best bonnet," a structure trimmed in Vermont seven years before by the
experienced hand of Miss Althy Spears, the village milliner, who had
adorned it with a durable green ribbon and a vigorous wreath of
artificial flowers. Thus helmeted, Mme. Gonsalvez presided at the stern
of the boat with great dignity. For they were in the safe,
well-appointed little yacht belonging to the two gentlemen, the daring
paroquet having been left at home tied to the last of a low heap of
rocks that jutted out into the water in front of the lighthouse, the
only remains of the old stone dock built by the Spaniards long before.
Sister St. Luke was with them of course, gentle and frightened as usual.
Her breath came quickly as they neared the reef, and Carrington with a
sure hand guided the little craft outside into the surf, and, rounding a
point, landed them safely in a miniature harbor he had noted there.
Keith had counted the days, and felt sure that the answer from the
convent would come soon. His offer--for he had made it his alone without
Carrington's aid--had been liberal; there could be but one reply. The
little Sister would soon go back to the lime-tree, the white rose-bush,
the doves, the old organ that was "so large"--all the quiet routine of
the life she loved so well; and they would see her small oval face and
timid dark eyes no more. So he took her for a last walk down the reef,
while Melvyna made coffee, and Carrington, having noticed a dark line
floating on the water, immediately went out in his boat, of course, to
see what it was.
The reef had its high backbone, like the island. Some day it would be
the island, with another reef outside, and the lighthouse beach would
belong to the mainland. Down the stretch of sand toward the sea the
pelicans stood in rows, toeing a mark, solemn and heavy, by the
hundreds--a countless number--for the reef was their gathering-place.
"They are holding a conclave," said Keith. "That old fellow has the
floor. See him wag his head."
In and out among the pelicans, and paying no attention to them and their
conclave, sped the sickle-bill curlews, actively probing everywhere with
their long, grotesque, sickle-shaped bills; and woe be to the burrowing
things that came in their way! The red-beaked oyster-bird flew by, and
close down to the sea skimmed the razor-bill shear-water, with his head
bent forward and his feet tilted up, just grazing the water with his
open bill as he flew, and leaving a shining mark behind, as though he
held a pencil in his mouth and was running a line. The lazy gulls, who
had no work to do, and would not have done it if they had, rode at ease
on the little wavelets close in shore. The Sister, being asked,
confessed that she liked the lazy gulls best. Being pressed to say why,
she thought it was because they were more like the white doves that sat
on the old stone well-curb in the convent garden.
Keith had always maintained that he liked to talk to women. He said that
the talk of any woman was more piquant than the conversation of the most
brilliant men. There was only one obstacle: the absolute inability of
the sex to be sincere, or to tell the truth, for ten consecutive
minutes. Today, however, as he wandered to and fro whither he would on
the reef, he also wandered to and fro whither he would in the mind, and
the absolutely truthful mind too, of a woman. Yet he found it dull! He
sighed to himself, but was obliged to acknowledge that it _was_ dull.
The lime-tree, the organ, the Sisters, the Sisters, the lime-tree, the
organ; it grew monotonous after a while. Yet he held his post, for the
sake of the old theory, until the high voice of Melvyna called them back
to the little fire on the beach and the white cloth spread with her best
dainties. They saw Carrington sailing in with an excited air, and
presently he brought the boat into the cove and dragged ashore his
prize, towed behind--nothing less than a large shark, wounded, dead,
after a struggle with some other marine monster, a sword-fish probably.
"A man-eater," announced the captor. "Look at him, will you? Look at
him, Miss Luke!"
But Miss Luke went far away, and would not look. In truth he was an ugly
creature; even Melvyna kept at a safe distance. But the two men noted
all his points; they measured him carefully; they turned him over, and
discussed him generally in that closely confined and exhaustive way
which marks the masculine mind. Set two women to discussing a shark, or
even the most lovely little brook-trout, if you please, and see how far
off they will be in five minutes!
But the lunch was tempting, and finally its discussion called them away
even from that of the shark. And then they all sailed homeward over the
green and blue water, while the white sand-hills shone silvery before
them, and then turned red in the sunset. That night the moon was at its
full. Keith went out and strolled up and down on the beach. Carrington
was playing fox-and-goose with Mme. Gonsalvez on a board he had
good-naturedly constructed for her entertainment when she confessed one
day to a youthful fondness for that exciting game. Up stairs gleamed the
little Sister's light. "Saying her prayers with her lips, but thinking
all the time of that old convent," said the stroller to himself, half
scornfully. And he said the truth.
The sea was still and radiant; hardly more than a ripple broke at his
feet; the tide was out, and the broad beach silvery and fresh. "At home
they are buried in snow," he thought, "and the wind is whistling around
their double windows." And then he stretched himself on the sand, and
lay looking upward into the deep blue of the night, bathed in the
moonlight, and listening dreamily to the soft sound of the water as it
returned slowly, slowly back from the African coast. He thought many
thoughts, and deep ones too, and at last he was so far away on ideal
heights, that, coming home after midnight, it was no wonder if, half
unconsciously, he felt himself above the others; especially when he
passed the little Sister's closed door, and thought, smiling not
unkindly, how simple she was.
The next morning the two men went off in their boat again for the day,
this time alone. There were still a few more questions to settle about
that shark, and, to tell the truth, they both liked a good day of
unencumbered sailing better than anything else.
About four o'clock in the afternoon Melvyna, happening to look out of
the door, saw a cloud no bigger than a man's hand low down on the
horizon line of the sea. Something made her stand and watch it for a few
moments. Then, "Miss Luke! Miss Luke! Miss Luke! Miss Luke!" she called
quickly. Down came the little Sister, startled at the cry, her lace-work
still in her hand.
"Look!" said Melvyna.
The Sister looked, and this is what she saw: a line white as milk coming
toward them on the water, and behind it a blackness.
"What is it?" she asked.
"A tornader," said Melvyna with white lips. "I've only seen one, and
then I was over in the town; but it's awful! We must run back to the
thicket." Seizing her companion's arm, the strong Northern woman hurried
her across the sand, through the belt of sand-hills, and into the
thicket, where they crouched on its far side close down under the
projecting backbone. "The bushes will break the sand, and the ridge will
keep us from being buried in it," she said. "I dursn't stay on the
shore, for the water'll rise."
The words were hardly spoken before the tornado was upon them, and the
air was filled with the flying sand, so that they could hardly breathe.
Half choked, they beat with their hands before them to catch a breath.
Then came a roar, and for an instant, distant as they were, they caught
a glimpse of the crest of the great wave that followed the whirlwind. It
seemed to them mountain-high, and ready to ingulf the entire land. With
a rushing sound it plunged over the keeper's house, broke against the
lower story of the tower, hissed across the sand, swallowed the
sand-hills, and swept to their very feet, then sullenly receded with
slow, angry muttering. A gale of wind came next, singularly enough from
another direction, as if to restore the equipoise of the atmosphere. But
the tornado had gone on inland, where there were trees to uproot, and
houses to destroy, and much finer entertainment generally.
As soon as they could speak, "Where are the two out in the sail-boat?"
asked the Sister.
"God knows!" answered Melvyna. "The last time I noticed their sail they
were about a mile outside of the reef."
"I will go and see."
"Go and see! Are you crazy? You can never get through that water."
"The saints would help me, I think," said the little Sister.
She had risen, and now stood regarding the watery waste with the usual
timid look in her gentle eyes. Then she stepped forward with her
uncertain tread, and before the woman by her side comprehended her
purpose she was gone, ankle-deep in the tide, knee-deep, and finally
wading across the sand up to her waist in water toward the lighthouse.
The great wave was no deeper, however, even there. She waded to the door
of the tower, opened it with difficulty, climbed the stairway, and
gained the light-room, where the glass of the windows was all shattered,
and the little chamber half full of the dead bodies of birds, swept
along by the whirlwind and dashed against the tower, none of them
falling to the ground or losing an inch of their level in the air as
they sped onward, until they struck against some high object, which
broke their mad and awful journey. Holding on by the shattered casement,
Sister St. Luke gazed out to sea. The wind was blowing fiercely, and the
waves were lashed to fury. The sky was inky black. The reef was under
water, save one high knob of its backbone, and to that two dark objects
were clinging. Farther down she saw the wreck of the boat driving before
the gale. Pedro was over in the village; the tide was coming in over the
high sea, and night was approaching. She walked quickly down the rough
stone stairs, stepped into the water again, and waded across where the
paroquet boat had been driven against the wall of the house, bailed it
out with one of Melvyna's pans, and then, climbing in from the window of
the sitting-room, she hoisted the sail, and in a moment was out on the
dark sea.