FIRE AND WATER.
When North left Mrs. Mellen in the woods he took a moment for
consideration, and then walked quickly towards the shore tavern. As he
turned a point which led from Piney Point to the bluff which overhung
it, his servant, the young mulatto, who had spent most of the season at
this retreat, came to meet him with a letter in his hand.
"It had a foreign postmark," said the man; "so I started to meet you the
moment it came in, according to orders."
"Right, boy, you are very right," cried North, tearing at the envelope
as a hawk rends its prey; "never let a scrap of writing from abroad rest
a moment out of my hands."
The man read the letter--only a few lines--and his hands shook till the
paper rattled again.
"Boy--boy, what day of the month is this?" he questioned, trying to fold
the letter, which he crushed instead.
"The tenth, sir."
North went into a mental calculation, then the cloud on his face broke
away and he almost shouted:
"It is in time--it is in time! Any other letters?"
"One for the Cove. Shall I slip it into the old man's parcel or would
you rather----"
"Give it to me," said North, cutting the servant short, and snatching at
the letter, which was in Mr. Mellen's handwriting and bore the
California postmark.
He was too eager for caution, and broke the seal recklessly.
"He, too--he coming, too! By Jove, this is glorious sport! Made his will
before sailing, ha!--provident man!--one half to his dear wife, the
other to his darling sister, Elsie Mellen. A safe precaution, for ships
will get lost at sea."
North crushed the two letters into his pocket, and walked with rapid
steps towards the tavern. But he only remained long enough to get a
telescope, with which he reappeared, and turned into a path leading to
the bluff. Once upon the ledge, high above the house, he levelled his
glass and took a hasty sweep of the ocean with it. Nothing was in sight
that seemed to interest him, so he turned the glass a little landward
and levelled it on the Piney Cove mansion, which made an imposing
feature in the landscape. From the eminence on which the mansion stood
the grounds sloped down to the water's edge in a closely-shaven lawn,
pleasantly broken up by flower-beds, and knots of old trees that looked
aged and mysterious enough to have watched that distant sweep of sea for
whole centuries.
North seemed to be counting every clump of trees, and calculating the
value of each broad field that stretched back from the crescent-like
Cove.
"It is a glorious old place, and we might live there like monarchs. If I
could only command the winds and waves for one week, now, we might defy
the rest. Half his property! Why, it is splendid; and the will safe."
With these words he turned his glass again. On a clear morning there was
a glorious view from the bluff, showing the full extent of the curving
bay, with its long line of steep woodlands stretching along the coast
and the bright rush of waters beyond, till the eye was lost in the white
line of the distant ocean.
Other mansions peeped out from among the trees, or stood boldly down on
the shore, and on the right hand a small village nestled in at the
furthermost extremity of the bay, forming a pleasant life picture. The
man cared nothing for these things, but turned his glass directly
oceanward, and searched the horizon with keen interest.
A ship hove in sight, like a great white bird, beating up from its nest
in mid-ocean. The heart in that bad man's bosom made a great bound, and
the blasphemy of a thanksgiving sprang to his lips; but the joy was only
for a moment. Dropping his glass, he muttered:
"Madman! to suppose, of all the ships on the ocean, it must be this one.
But if it should--if it should!"
He sat down on a fragment of rock, rested his glass on the drooping
branch of a tree, and watched the ship as it swept through a bank of
luminous fog and took a more definite form. Hitherto it had seemed
floating between a curve of the sky and the blue line of water, but now
it came out clearly, and as North looked he saw a dark pile of
storm-clouds muster up behind it with slow, threatening danger.
Hour after hour the man sat and watched that one object. The glass was a
powerful one, and seconded his keen vigilance. At length he was
rewarded, a burst of sunshine fell upon the vessel, the last that
illuminated the horizon that day, and he saw her name on the stern. The
telescope dropped from his hand, his face turned pale; the cry that
leaped to his lips perished there. The man was frightened by the
completion of his own wishes. Had some evil spirit performed a miracle
for him?
All the time this man had been watching, a tempest blackly followed the
homeward-bound ship. The ocean began to dash and torment itself into a
fury of wrath. A high wind came roaring up from the bosom of the waters,
and over all gathered a world of lurid gloom, kindled fiercely red by
the sun when it went down, and slowly engulfed the ship, which was last
seen struggling fearfully in the wild upheaving of the elements.
North seemed possessed of a demon that night. He left his telescope on
the earth, and went desperately to work, gathering up dry wood and
brush, which he stacked on the overhanging ledge, never pausing till a
great mound was created sufficiently large to keep a fire blazing all
night. By the time this was done the darkness became profound. Now arid
then he could see drifts of foam tossed upwards, like the fluttering
garments of a ghost fleeing from the storm. The little tavern at the
foot of the rock was lost in the overwhelming darkness. The lights from
the village seemed put out, and there was no vestige of Piney Cove
visible. No rain, as yet had fallen; and at this North rejoiced, for his
stock of wood was like tinder in its dryness, and the wind came fiercely
from the ocean, so fiercely that it threatened the death of any vessel
approaching the shore.
With all these elements of terror surrounding him, North worked till the
perspiration dropped from his forehead like rain. That cliff had been
blackened before with wreckers' fires, but never had a man heaped wood
upon wood with so vivid a conviction of the crime he meditated, with
such earnest desire for death to follow his toil.
When the evening had reached its darkest gloom, this man struck a match,
which he took from his pocket in a little case of enamelled gold--for
even in his crimes he was dainty--and thrust it among the yellow pine
splinters with which he had laid the foundation of his deathfire. The
blue light of the match flashed close to his face, revealing it white as
death, but smiling.
Directly a column of flame shot upward, first in fine quivering flashes,
then in long, curling wreaths of fire, that the wind seized upon and
tore into hot, red tatters, laughing and wrangling among them with
fearful grotesqueness.
North retreated from the blaze, and ran back into the woods, hiding
himself, for he feared to be seen from the tavern below. Now and then he
would start forth, toss a handful of fuel on the flames, and plunge back
into the darkness, where he listened greedily for some token to come out
of the storm and prove that his evil work was well done.
It came at last--a gun boomed out from the tempest. The man started and
began to tremble. Still he listened. Another gun, with loud cries
cutting sharply through the storm, then dead silence, followed by a
tumult upon the shore, as if men were gathering in haste.
North was not surprised at this. When a vessel struck in these days on
the Long Island shore, wreckers appeared in dozens, not eager for death,
for they would rather have avoided that, but keen for plunder. Now the
cries of these men made the storm terrible. Blue lights from the
stricken ship revealed her struggling fiercely among the breakers, which
were rending her like wild beasts.
Then North trampled out his death fire and went down to the beach among
the crowd of wreckers that stood waiting, with horrid patience, for the
ship to go to pieces and give its treasures into their greedy keeping.
"No boat could live among the breakers three minutes, I tell you," said
old Benson with gruff decision, when North, horrified by the terrible
shrieks that rang up from the sinking ship, was seized with an awful fit
of remorse, and cried out fiercely for help which no man could give. He
would have undone his work then had it been possible, for the last faint
light that went up from the wreck revealed a woman, with outstretched
arms and hair streaming back on the storm, pleading so wildly for help
that a fiend would have pitied her. It was this woman's life he had
sought, but with the sight of her his heart failed utterly.
But an evil deed once written in the eternal book of God cannot be
recalled. While this man stood in dumb helplessness on the beach, the
ship sunk. Out of the whirlpool which it made, the wretched woman was
tossed back among the breakers, that seized upon her, fiercely hurled
her to and fro against the rocks, then gave her over to a great
inheaving wave, which left her shrouded in a drift of seaweed almost at
her murderer's feet.
Daylight had broken on the wreck before it went down. Leaden and cold it
fell over the corpse of that poor woman as it was borne up to the
tavern, with the seaweed trailing from it and the wet garments clinging
to the limbs like cerements. Two rude seamen carried her away, for North
fled from the first sight of his work and plunged madly into the water,
where many a poor wretch was buffeting with the waves. He called on the
wreckers to help him, and dragged two or three exhausted creatures to
the beach, for he was ready to brave death in any shape rather than look
upon that cold form again.
They carried the lifeless woman up to the tavern, and, careless of
ceremony, laid her on the bed in North's room. Here they left her, with
the salt sea-water dripping in a heavy rain from her garments, soaking
the bed and forming dreary rivulets along the uncarpeted floor.
Deep in the morning North came up from the beach pale and staggering
from exhaustion. He went into his chamber and was about to cast himself
on the bed, when, lo! that face on the pillow met his gaze, ghastly and
cold. The heavy dropping of the water struck upon his ear like the fall
of leaden bullets. He stood paralyzed yet fascinated. A shudder colder
than spray from his garments shook his form from head to foot; and,
turning, he fled down the stairs again out upon the beach, and helped
the wreckers to haul in their plunder, till he fell utterly exhausted on
the sands.