It was a strange thing to Desmond. Try as he might, Regnan could not
hear it. Summoned to the door, he stood and looked out, and bent his
attention to discern only the rhythmic throb of the rain, only the waves
splashing across the deck, only the slow drip of the water through a
leak in the flimsy roof. He looked curiously at his companion as
Desmond, every fibre alert, his eyes afire with excitement, his lifted
hand trembling, and the cigar between his fingers dead in its ash, would
exclaim “Now!” and stand motionless again, listening acutely as if to an
echo.
“I hear nothing but the rain,” said Regnan. “But even if there were no
rain, we couldn’t hear the bell at Dryad-Dene so far as this.”
“But this might be the bell at Great Oaks,” argued Desmond.
“They wouldn’t ring unless they were overflowed. We left Dryad-Dene high
and dry this morning, and Great Oaks never goes under until Dryad-Dene
is half drowned, hardly ever even then; for the Fauries have a private
cross levee that protects Great Oaks, to a considerable extent. Besides,
there is no danger yet from high water,—all talk and the usual spring
scare.”
“There!” The bell boomed again, shaking the mists. And Desmond looked
into the face of Regnan in triumphant confirmation, to find his
companion fixing agitated, half-compassionate, half-questioning eyes
upon him.
“My dear fellow,” laying his hand on Desmond’s arm, “you don’t hear a
sound but the rain.”
“I must go! I must return at once to Great Oaks.”
Regnan remonstrated. They would be bogged down; the continued exposure
would kill them; he would not be a party to so foolhardy a hazard. “What
good could you do? If they are going under water, they are ringing up
the force to bring out the gunny-sacks and patch up the break.”
“It might be something else. There!”
Along the dark waters the sound was borne. It filled the fall of the
rain with a distant undiscriminated vibration.
“I ought to be able to restrain you by reason, Desmond,” Regnan urged
seriously. “Don’t let me have to appeal to these people for aid.”
“Look out,” said Desmond, with a dangerous flash of the eye. “They are
river pirates. I have cause to know.”
“So have _I_,” declared Regnan, bursting with laughter. “I saw two bales
of cotton tucked away in that closet when that rascal opened the door to
get the brandy.”
A word, a nod, an inferential phrase, and Regnan was in possession of
the story of the bicycle and of the suspicions of the shanty-boat’s
complicity as a “fence” with the marauders of the looted store at
Whippoorwill Landing.
“If you are minded to trust yourself to such creatures, I can only
deplore your lack of judgment. If you will come with me, I know they
will be glad to put you up at Great Oaks.”
“I’m afraid of getting my feet wet,” Regnan whimsically protested.
“You had much better come with me to Great Oaks.”
“I’m all right here. There is nothing to gain by meddling with me. These
people won’t dare. If I should be missing, they know that you would give
information where I was last seen. I am perfectly safe. I am going to
take up my abode on this trading-boat, my ark, as it seems, till the
waters subside. The dove is apparently something of the fiercest. And
the lunatic yonder sends cold chills down my spine. But I will risk
them, rather than that treacherous swamp. So will you, if you are wise.”
Boom! Desmond had already paid his score without question, to the
surprise of the boat’s company, accustomed to dicker on a price.
“Make my excuses to the Kentopps,” he said to Regnan, ending the
discussion and turning to leave.
“If ever I see them again,” cried Regnan. “I feel my feet spreading out
in webs. I think my wing feathers are sprouting. I’ll be transformed
into some sort of waterfowl and never get beyond Bogue Humma-Echeto any
more!”
“I’ll send the horse back to-morrow,” Desmond called out. He sprang
through the rain from the deck to the dark and marshy soil. But his
horse lifted his head with a glad neigh of recognition, and as he put
foot in stirrup and rode off, the animal set out at a swift gait and
with a stout willingness of heart that showed his eagerness for a
comfortable stall and manger, and his weariness of the detention that
had nevertheless rested him well. Under these conditions the inundated
swamp proved a less difficult proposition, albeit the water had risen
almost girth high and the wading was slow,—the horse splashing along
with a distinct impact of the mire, pulling with a sort of suction under
his hoofs.
Desmond, prescient of disaster, he knew not what, fired with the ardor
of a rescue, he knew not from what, ready to sacrifice comfort, safety,
life itself, in this wild, adventurous sort in his premonition that
Honoria Faurie had summoned assistance, that the bell had rung for help
at Great Oaks Plantation, resolved that no aid should come more
willingly, more instinct with protective spirit, than from him. It did
not once occur to him that this was a superfluous hazard which it was no
part of his duty to encounter. His only care, his only hope, was to
reach the plantation safely, that he might reach it swiftly. He took no
risks, less with a realization of his own interest than a prudence in
compassing his object. He exerted a judgment that might have been
thought impossible in one so unused to woodland experience; and though
the sense of loneliness settled down heavily upon him when he could no
longer see Regnan on the deck of his ark, and at last not even the
outline of the trading-boat, rising ever higher and higher in the sky as
he went down and down into the swamp till indeed it seemed caught up
into the clouds, he kept a stout heart. He resolutely turned his mind
from the knowledge of the coming of darkness, only an hour or so
distant, the savage animals of this primeval aqueous wilderness, the
probable chance that he might lose his way, the indefinite data by which
he might keep it, his burning impatience of the slow progress which
might yet fail to put him ere benighted beyond the immediate region of
slough and swamp and bayou, now infinitely increased in extent by the
rainfall. The small compass in his pocket which he had used in a lesson
with the redoubtable Chub was of great advantage in keeping him to his
direction. Straight to the south, Regnan had declared, and he would come
at last to the cross levee which usually protected Great Oaks in time of
overflow from receiving a share of the neighboring inundations, backing
up as the waters were reinforced. Southward he went, struggling through
sloughs, swimming bayous, scrambling up steep banks. On one of these his
stout horse fell backward almost upon his rider, and Desmond, throwing
himself to one side, escaped but for a bruised shoulder and arm, while
the animal was badly shaken. He could hardly endure the delay as he
stood on the edge of the water by the trembling creature and they had
some conversation, as one may say, over the mischance and the necessity
of pressing on. But the red roan was a good plucked brute, and before
long they were forging ahead once more, man and horse in perfect mutual
confidence.
Desmond could have shouted with joy when at last he saw the great
winding earthwork, covered with its green Bermuda grass; and when they
climbed its steep slope and gained the path on the summit, the horse of
his own accord struck a jaunty little canter, glad of the good going and
the sight once more of a civilized landscape; for presently within view
were great stretches of cotton-fields. And what was that immense expanse
in the distance? Desmond could not distinguish for the rain and the
mist, and for a phenomenon of far more import. In the shadow of a
stretch of forest a huge gully intervened in the levee,—fresh, the earth
on the sides showing a degree of dryness despite the rain, the sod of
Bermuda ripped through, and the turf, still green, thrown aside. The
levee had been cut, and Desmond received an illumination in the
recollection of the boat-hand’s words that Jed Knoxton had gone forth
that morning with his spade. He began to have an appalling sense of the
extent of the disaster even before he came upon a counterpart excavation
and realized that the levee had been cut in more than one place. The
nefarious job had been thoroughly done, and though in broad daylight,
the cloaking fog and blinding rain offered an impunity that a dark and
clear night could scarcely have afforded. He understood now the
significance of that broad expanse of copper-hued glister of which he
had caught but a glimpse through the aisles of the woods and the serried
ranks of the rainfall; it was overflow, miles of overflow, submerging
the wide tilled and orderly fields of Great Oaks Plantation. And that
roar in the air—what was it? Tumultuous, loud, with a petulant dash and
a sinister sibilance, blended with episodic crashes and sudden wild
clamors, like the frenzied turbulence of savage beasts. It was the voice
of the Mississippi River, silent no longer in its deep channel, but
rioting in shallow floods over the aghast, despoiled plains, crying out
in its license and its mad joy, seeming now and again to smite against
the sky.
The wind was rising. The gusts, coming down the great, unimpeded highway
of the stream, gave impetus to its currents surging against miles of
levee still unbroken, and lashing and sweeping away, melting in a
moment, the embankments that collapsed under its force. The water
nearest at hand, he perceived, was backing up; it was not long before he
had reached it, lapping playfully about the base of the cross levee on
which he stood. How long this path would continue practicable he could
not compute. The horse, more accustomed to the river and its incidents,
was showing evident signs of uneasiness, and in fact he stopped
presently, with tossing head and startled eyes and planted hoofs, before
Desmond perceived through the rain and the distance a white flashing in
the dun evening light, which, had he no experience of the locality, he
might have mistaken for a cataract. The inference was obvious. It was
the foam of raging waters as they tore through an excavation
intersecting the cross levee once more. The great volume of the flood
was surging over its summit. It was a question of only a very short time
when the levee, along which he had come and where he now stood, would be
swept away. Both he and the horse were in imminent danger of death by
drowning. His first impulse was to turn back and retrace his way. But at
this moment of hesitation his attention was caught by a moving object on
the face of the waters, emerging from the fog and the rain, and
gradually materializing as a man in a very small boat.
“Hello!” cried Desmond, peremptorily.
The man ceased to paddle and looked about him doubtfully, at first on
his own level, only descrying the mounted figure on the embankment at a
second stentorian roar from Desmond.
“Fur de Lawd’s sake, is dat you, Mr. Desmond!” he cried out in instant
recognition. “In de name o’ sense, what you gwine do up dar on dat
levee?”
“Is that you, Seth?” for the negro was a hostler on Great Oaks
Plantation, a very black fellow, looking as he sat in the dugout like a
silhouette against the gray rain and the white mist and the yellow
water. “I don’t know what to think—”
“I does,” Seth promptly interrupted. “I think you gwine git yo’se’f
drownded, an’ Colonel Kentopp’s hawse, too.”
“How deep is the water?” Desmond had the instinct of remonstrating
against this as a decree of fate.
“Six feet along dar, an’ risin’ every jump. I ain’t never seen the
contrary old ribber on sech a bender, an’ I been knowin’ her gwine on
fawty year.”
Desmond was alarmed at the idea of jeopardizing the valuable horse. He
hardly noticed Seth’s plaints.
“We-all’s levee done cut—’fore de Lawd, dem planters in Deepwater Bend
below Great Oaks would be mighty glad if dey could cotch dat varmint dat
cut de levee. Dey nachully depends on Great Oaks cross levee to keep the
ribber off ’n dem, when Dry’-Dene goes under. Oh, my Lawd A’mighty, dis
am a drefful day, shore!”
“I had better ride back along the levee,” said Desmond, ponderingly.
“It’ll be under water in ten minutes.”
“But I must take the horse to some place of safety.”
“Whar is dat?” demanded Seth, walling his great eyes, with the whites
very prominent as he gazed up at his interlocutor at long range; the
distance was constantly lessened, however, for he paddled closer and
closer to the base of the levee as he talked.
“What is the safest way to the stables? I will take the horse there.”
“What you gwine dar fur? You hatter charter a steamboat. Water up ter de
mangers.”
“In the Great Oaks stables? Is the mansion flooded, too?” Desmond, in
keen alarm for the household, trembled to hear the reply.
These disasters and their concurrent dangers were so new to his
experience and even traditions that he could scarcely contemplate their
encounter with composure. Seth seemed to him a stolidly unfeeling clod,
hardly able to stretch his limited faculties to an adequate
comprehension. But indeed, though there was no lack of water hereabout,
Seth had contributed a tear or two to the floods in his woe and despair
for the destruction of these familiar values by which he lived and in
which he had such vicarious pride.
“The stable under water? Why, how about the mansion?”
“De gret house is safe!” Seth snapped out, as if the question were
imputatious; even the insubordinate Mississippi River would not venture
upon the presumption to meddle with the dignified mansion house of Great
Oaks Plantation. “I jes’ seen Bob, an’ he ’lowed de water had filled de
grove, an’ air lappin’ ‘round de underpinnin’, but ’tain’t riz yit inter
de veranda.”
Desmond was aghast at this intimation of jeopardy.
“De gret house is on high groun’, an’ dough dey tuk up de kyarpets
wunst, de overflow ain’t never been rightly in de mansion house.”
“Bob ought to be there; it is the footman’s station,” Desmond exclaimed,
thinking how few the inmates to cope with any unusual danger.
“Dey ain’t none o’ de house sarvants dar, ’cept de cook-woman. Mis’
Honoria sont de rest ob dem ter holp dar famblies at de quarter. Bless
de Lawd, boss, ye oughter see de quarter!” Seth’s voice rose to a
distressful quaver. “’Twas so suddint—the cross levee never gave way
before, an’ we-all ain’t never had no sich water as dis here. Some o’ de
tenant folks is sittin’ on de ridge-poles ob dar cabin roof, savin’
nuttin’ but dar bedclothes; dar funicher is floatin’ ‘way like ’twar
’witched an’ gone swimmin’. The chillen wuz mighty nigh drownded. One
dem pickaninnies ob Liza Jane’s war cotched by the tail ob its coat an’
hung in a cottonwood tree. Hit hollered! But hit never squirmed. Hit
knowed catfish an’ yalligator war smackin’ dar lips an’ sharpenin’ dar
teeth for hit. Lawd! Lawd! We ain’t never had no sech time. Mis’ Honoria
sont ebery sarvant from de gret house ter holp dar folks, ’cept de
cook-woman—an’ _she_ say she is feared ter ride ter de quarter in de
overflow in a dugout.”
“That was why the bell was ringing, then; to summon help?”
The darkey paused, leaning on his paddle, and looked up at Desmond with
a curious and searching eye.
“Bell!” he exclaimed. “The Great Oaks plantation bell ain’t rung since
daybreak.”
There was a pause. Desmond knew the superstition concerning bells,—the
ancient universal tradition of mystic summons. There was no habitation
nearer the bayou whence some great brazen casting could send forth that
coercive tone; the distance from the river was too great to admit the
sound from a passing steamer.
“Naw, sir; if you hearn bells callin’ you to-day, they ring in your
mind. Somebody in heaven or hell, or somebody in yearth or air, is
callin’ you, callin’ you by spirit bells—thoughts reach furder’n sound.
Mighty cur’us, but that’s sure true. Bells!” Seth raised himself on his
paddle and looked up with a face distorted by query and fear into the
rain and fog. “_Bells!_” he said again. Then he lent himself to the work
of the paddle, and was soon within leaping distance of the levee.
“You gimme dat hawse, boss, an’ I’ll take him ter de risin’ ground whar
we got what we is saved. Lawd! ye ought ter see de cattle drownded! My
Gawd! De cows mooin’ an’ de calves a-blatin’, all swimmin’ as long as
dar legs could work ’em along—an’ de sheep! Ef I had time, I’d jes set
down an’ moan an’ weep an’ preach dar funeral. Some ob de best head ob
our Great Oaks cattle! Dar carcases floatin’ down de ribber or cotched
in de bushes in de swamp! Gimme dat hawse. Colonel Kentopp’s a perlite
man, but I’d hate fur anything belongin’ ter him ter git lost on Great
Oaks Plantation. _You_ couldn’t find yer way. I’ll take tacks an’ short
cuts, an’ I know whar is risin’ ground. You an’ de hawse would lose yer
way an’ both be drownded. You git in de dugout an’ go ter de mansion
house. You kin find dat, ef ye kin see ter keep ter de west.”
The immemorial dugout, peculiar to the Mississippi River country, is a
primitive craft, nothing more, indeed, than a log, roughly hollowed out
and shaped as to stern and prow. It is quite adequate, however, to the
purposes of its creation, for skirting banks, navigating bayous and
lakes, rarely venturing into midstream or crossing the great river. It
is safe enough in accustomed hands, but it is doubtful if Desmond were
not in more danger of drowning thus embarked than returning on his
precarious route along the summit of the levee. The dugout wallowed
portentously as Desmond stepped within its restricted space, but after a
few words of instruction from Seth he righted the craft and presently
paddled off easily enough, the darkey standing beside the horse,
watching the boat till it was lost to sight in the rain and the
approaching dusk and the fog closing down.
“I ’spec’ dat ar man is safe in de dugout,” he muttered, “dough his kind
is used ter de saloon ob a side-wheel steamboat, an’ dat’s de fac’. We
done loss enough cattle drownded dis day, ’dout him ter top off wid.” So
saying, Seth mounted and rode away into the rain.
Though the dugout was a new proposition to Desmond, he had had some
experience with the paddle as a propelling agent. His Alma Mater was
situated on a watercourse, and at one time the Indian canoe and paddle
was a favorite fad. Thus his progress was swift through the rain and the
fog, despite the fact that for the first time he felt the strength of
the current of the Mississippi; for he was soon out of the limits of the
back water and in the direct course of the overflow. He would have
scorned the acceptance of a superstition, but the premonition of a
summons was so strong upon him that he stretched every muscle to his
task. The glimpse of the wide expanse of water, that might have appalled
him, alone and without guidance in the midst of its willful, riotous
turbulence, was but limited. The fog shut in, and but for a few
boat-lengths he could see naught but the surging yellow current of a
restricted space and the pallid curtain of the cloudy dusk. Sometimes a
shadowy looming near at hand intimated a building half submerged,
invisible in the fog and rain. More than once he thought he heard
voices, whether far or near he could not determine. An incident of the
high water, on which he had not counted, was the débris aloose and
afloat, which invested navigation with undreamed-of dangers, with which
he could make no covenant of caution. More than once flotsam shot past
him in the gloom on the swift current, with a force as if flung from a
catapult; sometimes it was the lumber of a wrecked building; once it was
a capsized boat, adrift, telling either of the strain of the current,
breaking it loose from its moorings, or of a hapless wight lost upon the
turbulent waves; once it was a drift log, which was upon him almost as
soon as seen, shooting out of the white invisibilities of the mist and
striking the dugout amidships with a force that threatened to send it to
the bottom. It rocked so violently that Desmond had much ado to keep it
right side up. When the drift log had disappeared and he was once more
paddling on in clear water, it seemed so deep, the current was so
strong, night was closing in so fast, that he began to fear he had been
swept out to the main river; at length, however, the mist gave
intimations here and there of vertical, shadowy objects at close
intervals, which he only discriminated as the trees of the grove when he
came in sudden contact with the bole of a gigantic oak. The dugout
rebounded from the collision with a violent recoil that seemed to stir
all the fibres of the hollowed log, but Desmond could hardly realize the
shock which had jarred his every bone, so rejoiced was he to feel
himself near his journey’s end. He steered more deftly after this, with
more heed, with less effort at speed, perhaps because the mists were
lightening, or that now he had his faculties better in hand since his
plunging, frantic haste under the spur and lash of suspense was abated,
as his object was achieved. Soon he was able to discern that he was
surely and swiftly approaching the house, which to his surprise, massive
and wide and low in the gloom, showed not a single gleam of light. He
saw the live oak at one side, which the veranda encircled, towering up
into the air, and suddenly he lifted his paddle and let the dugout drift
without a sound. For there, in front of the main entrance, a yawl swung
at a distance of a few oars’ length, kept from drifting by the
occasional stroke of half a dozen rowers. At the bow a man was standing,
holding a colloquy with the inmates of the house. Desmond had not heard
his words, the husky, gruff voice and defective articulation had masked
them, but his heart plunged responsive to the clear, vibrant tones,
thrilled with fright, as Mrs. Faurie spoke as boldly as she might.
“But they are not here,” she said.
The man gave a sort of derisive chuckle and the oarsmen laughed
together. One of them, a thick-set fellow with matted red hair, vaguely
familiar to Desmond, sitting crouched in the place of the stroke-oar,
spat contemptuously in the water.
“Well, Mrs. Faurie, whar mought you be willin’ to say they are?” the
spokesman asked.
Another, pale, wiry, hatchet-faced, and evidently a meddlesome lout,
intruded a sneer. “I reckon,” he said, with a simpering, brisk
intonation,—“I reckon ye won’t purtend that you disremember whar you put
thutty thousand dollars wuth o’ emeralds.”
“I will not, indeed! I put them into a bank in New Orleans.”
Desmond realized that she was standing at the open window of the parlor,
and from such shelter as it afforded was holding parley with the
villains,—it was doubtless the identical gang of river pirates who had
looted the store at Whippoorwill Landing with such signal impunity.
“Then, madam, we will take your order for them,” said the flippant
intermeddler, airily.
“Keep yer face out of it,—ye’re bug-house, Danvelt!” said the thick-set
man. “What good would the order do? She would signal the fust steamboat
that passed,—she would telegraph as soon as we were gone!—send a nigger
in a dugout across the river to the railroad flag station in the
Arkansas. Either one would overhaul us.”
“Mightn’t be ekal to signalin’ an’ telegraphin’. Might be gagged an’
under lock an’ key—ef still alive!”
The man in the bow spoke authoritatively. “Sorry not to take a lady’s
word. But biz is biz! We will search the house, an’ if the jools are not
thar, sure enough, you will obleege us with your order on your bankers,
and the key of your deposit box.”
Mrs. Faurie had lost control of her voice. It was high and shrill in the
dank, misty air. “I will not permit you to enter. I warn you of the
consequences if you set foot on that veranda. You will all bear
witness,” she added, as if she addressed an unseen group within.
The feint, gallant-hearted as it was, failed of conviction. The
spokesman, openly scornful, disdained response other than threats. “The
Miss’ippi River is mighty convenient, here.”
“Tain’t gone dry noways that I can see,” said the pert wit of the party,
and there was a tumult of chuckling and shaking shoulders in the boat.
“We have a lot of rope handy,” the spokesman continued, holding up a
coil in his hand, his hard face white and fierce against the gray waters
and lowering sky. “Look at them iron vases!”—the rims of the great lawn
ornaments, six in number, showed above the surface of the swirling
waters, where they stood at the end of the broad walk and at the
intersections of the driveways on either side of the mansion. “They will
make capital weights, enough to sink every soul in the house,—the three
boys, old man Stanlett, yerself, and even that big fat nigger
cook-woman, for that is all ye have got in the house,—sink ye, every
one; the Miss’ippi River is one hunderd and eighty feet deep in
Deepwater Bend, even at low water.” He shook his head ominously, and the
rills of rain ran off the wide slouched brim of his hat with the
sinister energy of his motion. “Never be heard tell of no more,—if ye
don’t see yer way to accommodate us with the order and the key.”
And, sooth to say, if she should! There was no alternative. It was only
a subterfuge of inducement. Desmond’s blood ran cold. He perceived in
aghast dismay the symmetry and perfection of the plan of the miscreants.
They had doubtless made sure of the absence from the plantation of the
manager, who was in Vicksburg on a business trip, and of the visit of
the tutor to Dryad-Dene, before they ventured to cut the levee. The
inundation of the plantation quarter with its flimsy low houses menaced
its inhabitants, especially women and children, with drowning, and would
draw to its succor every available man from the stanch mansion house,
which was amply able to cope with floods. When the servants should
return, the absence of the family would be accounted for variously in
their minds and without apprehension of evil: some passing steamboat
might have responded to a signal and sent out a yawl to assist them to a
refuge in Natchez or Memphis, there to abide till the overflow should
abate; some neighbor, the Kentopps, the Mayberrys, perchance still on
dry ground themselves, might have come and delivered them from their
inundated domicile. There would be no one among the tenants and servants
left in authority, no one fitted to act. Days might well elapse before
aught would be suspected. The order upon the bankers would be duly
honored; the fence in New Orleans—for doubtless in an affair of such
magnitude the robbers were provided with a respectable seeming _deus ex
machina_, some shyster at the bar, some trickster of a loan agent, some
defaulting bank official on the eve of detection and flight—would be
upon the high seas with the famous emeralds, before the Faurie mystery,
as the disappearance of the family would be called, should set the river
country agog with horror and baffled wonder and impotent despair.
Desmond’s strong head was dizzy; his stout heart fluttered as he
realized the peril and the tenuous possibility of succor,—a single hair
to which he might cling, the fraction of a minute of time! If only he
could enter the house first! From without he could hope for naught. He
could not cope here with six brutal and hardened villains, doubtless the
miscreants who had wrought robbery and arson and malignant murder in the
tragedy at Whippoorwill Landing. He could not show himself here, for he
would only sacrifice his life, worth more at this moment than ever
before,—than it could be again. He dared not shoot from ambush; for a
failure of aim would result fatally to her, to him, to all in the house.
He could not venture to step on the veranda, lest his footfall be heard
or even his form be dimly descried from the yawl continually oscillating
to and fro.
Oh, for one impulse of courage in that fainting feminine heart! Could
she but rally her forces to withstand their demand, to brave their
hideous threat, to hold them in parley but one moment longer. His own
heart leaped as he heard her voice again. It was full of quavering
vibrations, high and shrill and strangely out of tune. But she spoke
stanchly and with the poise of dignity. “This is my house. I forbid you
to set foot in it,—to trespass one inch on this veranda. I warn you that
I shall not be answerable for the consequences. I call you all to
witness,” she seemed to address the group within. “And I have help at
hand.”
She uttered the words with such apparent confidence in the midst of her
direful extremity that they seemed to carry somewhat of conviction, to
stir the suspicion, the cowardice of the marauders. They did not at once
move forward, but hung as it were in the wind on the oscillating water.
It was a failure of judgment which induced her on noting the effect of
her words to repeat them, for instantly interpreting them as a bluff,
the oars struck the water and the craft moved forward. “I have help,”
she piteously repeated. “I have help at hand.”
“You have,—you have, indeed!” Desmond’s heart responded, for his plan
was perfected in those few minutes of final parley. He let the dugout
drift away while he caught the drooping branches of the live-oak tree
that swept the surface of the water. The stir of the foliage, as with
his rifle he clambered through the boughs, was not to be distinguished
from the rustling of the wind. He lifted the sash of one of the dormer
windows and was safe in a room he had never seen. A wan gleam of the
twilight fell through the glass, barely enough to disclose the
surroundings, for the window was curtained with some floriated opaque
stuff. An unused room it apparently was, with an unfurnished bed, a few
chairs, a table, and in the jamb of the chimney on either side tall
presses built in the wall, one of which stood half open and was
seemingly full of bundles of papers. A mere glance afforded these
details as he dashed to the door. It gave easily under his touch; he had
had one dreadful moment, faint with fear, lest it might prove to be
locked. He was still trembling as he groped along the dark hall, his
weapon in hand. He paused for an instant at the head of the unfamiliar,
vaguely descried stairs, feeling with his foot for the edge of the first
of the flight.
He could hardly control his agitation, his wonder, as he heard a
strange, muffled stir, that sibilant, lisping step on the stair which he
remembered from the early days of his stay at Great Oaks Plantation, the
silken sound of the invisible patrol.