Captain Eric’s philosophy about not crossing bridges ahead of time
proved to have been well founded in this particular case. Full moon,
when it came, not only ushered in a flood tide, but was accompanied with
a heavy blow out of the northwest which drove a great volume of water
before it through the narrow mouth of Shipwreck Bay—which was the name
by which Erica and Lis had christened the harbor where the _Sea Gull_
lay on her reef. This extra pressure of wind and water made that tide a
memorable one in the island’s history, and the clipper floated clear, on
its crest, to the deep side of the coral bar.
It was an anxious time for all on board, as well as for the little
colony in the huts on the ocean shore of the islet. And when the tide
had reached its height, and the great clipper, with all her canvas set
to utilize the wind’s force as well as that of the sea, finally rose,
literally inch by inch, until her keel rode the long swells without
scraping or bumping, a rousing cheer burst from dozens of throats. Then,
the reef well astern, there sounded the creaking of the capstan as the
anchor chain was paid out, and the clipper came to rest again quietly, a
hundred or more yards from the scene of her imprisonment.
All preparations had been made for leaving the island on the following
day, if the ship should succeed in freeing herself from the reef, and by
sunrise of the next morning her sails were once more set, and the
capstan busily winding in the anchor.
Early as it was, Erica was up on deck, leaning against the rail on the
port side, to watch the green jungle growth of the hillside slip
smoothly and silently into their wake.
In the midst of all the jubilation about her, she was conscious of a
vague regret. Of course she didn’t want to have to spend the rest of her
life on this island, but she had only had ten days of it, and she had
enjoyed to the full every moment of every one of those days. In all
probability she would never see those steeply-sloping green shores
again; never explore strange and beautiful jungle paths such as she had
known till then only in the pages of story books; never swim in a
brilliantly blue lagoon inside the reef, and watch, down—down—_down_
through its clear depths, the antics of strange fish and other
exotically colored little sea creatures for which she had no names,
disporting themselves gayly in the routine of their every-day marine
existences. It had been a very wonderful experience, that ten days’ stay
on the island—Hurricane Island, they had unanimously decided to name it,
for obvious reasons.
However, there would be exciting tales to tell her friends at home on
Nantucket, which was, in a measure at least, consolatory. There was,
also, the tragic story of the lost _Narwhal_, and the finding of those
of her crew who had survived. All Nantucket would want to hear that tale
over and over in the days to come.
And much good had come to the whole company on board the clipper. Sun Li
was unmistakably better; so was Aunt Charity. As for the rest of them,
their sunburnt, wind-tanned faces and glowing eyes fairly radiated
health. The only cloud that overshadowed their skies in the week of
their passage north was the realization of the sad news they carried to
the families of the mate and those other sailors of the _Narwhal_ who
had not come home.
But they tried not to think of this any more than they could help. At
least they had rescued Captain Joy and eight sailors, which would mean
happiness in nine island families. That was pleasanter to consider than
the other side of the picture.
As if to make up for the storm which had so nearly stolen their ship,
the weather all the way from Hurricane Island to Nantucket was as
perfect as the most timid of ocean travelers could desire. Blue skies
smiled down on a calm blue sea day after day; and a well-behaved sailing
wind blew them steadily on their way, without the interference of gales
or calms.
The _Sea Gull_ skimmed the waters like a wild thing in flight, graceful
as the bird for which she had been named, and as tireless. The white
cutwater churning up before her slim, sharp prow was a never-ending
delight to Erica perched in the bow, with the up-flung spray wetting her
flushed face and leaving the taste of salt on her parted lips. Or, just
before twilight fell, when the afterglow still painted the ocean rose
and purple and gold, the stern was an equally wonderful place to lean
against the rail and stare at the rainbow-tinted wake they left behind
them, as they raced gallantly to meet the oncoming, misty dusk and the
star-pointed darkness that came after.
The call of the sea was in Erica Folger’s blood; always, in each
generation, some of the men in her family had been sea captains. It was
her earliest grievance against life that she had not been a boy and free
to follow in their footsteps. It had been the one, certain, enraging
taunt with which the twins could retaliate in their recurrent
differences of opinion as children—their superiority in this respect.
But anyhow, Erica told herself, this was the next best thing. A
passenger may be an insignificant person when compared with a captain of
one of these stately clippers; but a passenger can at least feel the
beauty and the wonder of the sea just as keenly. Never, no matter if she
lived to be an old, old lady, would the memory of this voyage in the
_Sea Gull_ be dimmed by the passing years. Besides, if fate were kind,
there would be other voyages. For instance, there was China, and a vague
half-promise she had already wrung from her father on the subject.
Erica’s fingers stole to a knotted Chinese cord she wore around her
neck, on which hung a small, exquisitely carved jade-and-silver key….
She begrudged each shining day as it went by, and yet as the time
arrived when any minute the low, gray outline of her native island would
loom over the horizon line where sky and water met, she found herself
watching for it as eagerly as Miss Charity, or the shipwrecked sailors
from the lost _Narwhal_. After all, home was home; and no matter how
beautiful and romantic desert islands might be to explore, Nantucket was
the nicest place in the world to come back to.
She was up in the bow with Lis when they first caught sight of the dim,
far-off speck—a mere gray smudge on the low sky line—for which they were
waiting. It was Lis who spied it first and touched her arm, pointing.
”_Nantucket!_” he said.
They sent word below to Sun Li, who had asked to be notified as soon as
the island was in sight, and he came up on deck, carried as usual in his
sedan chair by the stolid coolie bearers. Erica ran to him at once, and
directed his eyes to the little gray smudge which as yet required
super-eyesight to discern against the equally gray water.
It was not one of those brilliant days of blue skies and sunshine which
are never more beautiful than on Nantucket, but overcast and sunless.
Mists drove in ahead of them from the sea, occasionally blotting out
even that tiny speck Lis’s quick eyes had been the first to see.
The wind had died to a faint breeze that was scarcely strong enough to
fill the clipper’s big sails. She moved through the gray water lazily,
as if she, like Erica, regretted the end of the voyage.
Later the mists parted, and with a change in the wind’s direction,
eddied off to the south of the island. The ship was near enough now for
the watchers on deck to make out a hint of slender church steeples, a
vague outline of roofs, and the higher ground behind them.
They rounded Great Point and stood in toward the harbor. Miss Charity
and Mrs. Folger came on deck, bringing Milly and little Barbee with
them, and they all grouped against the rail, straining eager eyes to
catch sight of familiar landmarks.
Yet, queerly enough, there seemed to be nothing familiar in the long
gray shore line; only the steeples and the higher ground behind the
town. Something was strange and different here which they could not
quite make out. They might have been approaching a totally unknown port
for all they were able to recognize. They turned and eyed each other
with a questioning, half-formed apprehension, but no one spoke until Lis
broke out in a shaken voice:
“Ricky, look! There—_isn’t_—any—town—”
And then the others saw too. Down by the water’s edge, and as far inland
as they could see, there were no houses standing; only a blackened and
twisted tangle of charred wood, fantastically leaning chimneys, and
sagging roof-beams….
Miss Charity, unlike her usually calm self, cried out in a frightened
whisper, a soft little protesting ghost of a cry, “No—_no_——” and fell
silent again, one thin hand clutching at her heart. Captain Eric, who
had come up unnoticed behind them, slipped his arm about her shoulders,
and held her up, strongly, offering neither comfort nor attempted
explanations. As a matter of fact, he was as stunned and bewildered as
she. _What terrible catastrophe had overtaken the old gray town during
their absence?_ It was incredible, like something seen in a nightmare
from which one confidently expects to wake. Only—there it was before
their eyes. Blackened wood, torn and twisted roofs, fallen chimneys——
Not the aftermath of a fire, but of a holocaust.
The nearer they came, the more plainly did the desolation show. In the
few weeks they had been gone, the whole town had been swept out of
existence by fire; that much they were aware of. But how, when, and why
this thing had happened they had of course no possible means as yet of
knowing.
The _Sea Gull_ anchored in the harbor entrance, for once again, as on
her former visit, the tide was wrong for a ship of her size to clear the
bar. The largest of her boats was lowered and manned, and Captain Eric,
Miss Charity, Mrs. Folger, Milly, Baby Barbee, Erica, and Lis crowded
into it. No matter if they overloaded it a bit; the harbor was calm, and
the need to learn the extent of the catastrophe at once made them all
reckless.
The approach of the clipper had drawn a little crowd to the burnt and
blackened wreck of the wharf. The sailors had to beach the boat, and
help the two ladies and Milly ashore, lifting them over the wet sand.
Erica tumbled over the side in Lister’s wake, heedless of wet feet and
bedraggled dress hem.
The thrilling tale of their sea adventures which she had looked forward
to relating was forgotten. It was she who fell eagerly into the rôle of
listener now, as, grouped together on the sand, the passengers from the
_Sea Gull_ heard the story of the tragedy as related by old friends and
neighbors who had come down to welcome them home.
Bad as the news was, however, it was not quite so hopeless as a first
glimpse of the wreckage alongshore had led them to believe. More than
half the town had been saved, owing to a blessed veering of the wind,
and the heroic work of the fire-fighters who had not stopped even at
dynamiting untouched buildings in the fire’s path, and checking its
progress. Trinity Church had gone in the flames, as had the Atheneum,
the fine library of which the townspeople were so justly proud. The
museum had been destroyed, too, and _every store in the town but one_.
In all, about four hundred houses had been demolished, so ran the
appalling summing-up.
Miss Charity, white-faced, her eyes full of tears, touched the arm of
one of the men in the crowd, a retired sea captain who had been a friend
of her father’s.
“Captain Jem, no one has said—our houses—Callie’s and mine——” she
managed to ask between dry lips.
The old man put a fatherly hand on her arm.
“Untouched, thank the good Lord, Miss Charity,” he said, quickly. “The
fire didn’t get to Orange Street—turned off and went north just a few
hundred feet from there. But I’m afraid you’ll find uninvited guests
crowding both houses, my dear. We had to find shelter for so many, we
took the liberty of putting two families in your closed house,” he spoke
to Mrs. Folger, across her sister-in-law. “Mrs. Joy, next door, said
you’d left the key with her, and it didn’t seem any time to hesitate——”
“Of course not, of course not!” Both Miss Charity and Mrs. Folger cried,
together. Tears were streaming down their cheeks, and Milly was frankly
sobbing, her face buried on Mrs. Callie Folger’s shoulder.
“When did it happen—and how?” Captain Eric demanded, as soon as he could
trust his voice.
Several of those about him shook their heads. “No one knows exactly. It
broke out in the night—two weeks ago. They had to fight it for three
days, a’most.” The confused chorus of answers blurred together in a
many-keyed humming. “But we’re already clearing away the wreckage. We’ll
be rebuilding soon——”
Not beaten, not even faint-hearted in the face of the tragedy that had
overtaken them! Erica felt a sudden surge of pride in her island and its
people that was like nothing she had ever known before. _This_—not
desert islands or strange jungles or Chinese palaces—was romance, the
high adventure of life. Meeting defeat, heads up and courage steady, and
turning it into victory! She felt very humble and young; a little
ashamed, too, of her own childish ambitions.
They picked their way up Main Street, and turned south into Orange,
leaving here the wreckage and débris behind them. Orange Street was the
first familiar thing they had found on the island. Erica would have
liked to fall down and kiss the gray-painted shabby front steps of Aunt
Charity’s house. Even the blue and adventurous sea she loved was not so
beautiful as home.
The homeless neighbors who were crowded into the two houses crowded
themselves still more closely and made room for the rightful owners.
Miss Charity and Erica went back to their own home—there was more room
there than in Mrs. Folger’s, when Lis, Milly, Barbee, and Mrs. Folger
herself had all to find corners in which to stow themselves and their
belongings.
Still, crowding seemed a small price to pay for having one’s own roof,
untouched by the general calamity, over one’s head again.
Captain Eric returned to the _Sea Gull_, and promised to keep Sun Li and
his retinue aboard, where they would be comfortable. But the following
day the Governor, in his sedan chair, accompanied by Dr. Wu, made a
pilgrimage through the ruined town to Orange Street, and spent an hour
with Mrs. Folger and Miss Charity in the former’s sitting room. When he
departed, he left behind, in the joint custody of these two stunned and
feebly protesting ladies, a sum of money that frightened them both
rather badly, to be used as they saw fit toward relieving the suffering
of those rendered so suddenly homeless. His was among the first, and
certainly one of the largest, contributions toward this cause that soon
flowed in from all parts of the country and abroad.
On the second day after their arrival in the harbor, the _Sea Gull_
sailed again, carrying Sun Li, Dr. Wu, His Excellency’s gorgeous lacquer
sedan chair, and the coolie bearers back to their native China. Erica,
who had cherished up to the last minute a faint spark of hope that she
might be included in the party, was partially consoled by a definite
promise from her father that two years hence, when she should have
finished her schooling, he would take her with him on one of his
voyages. With that she had to be content.
She went down to the shore, at the hour the clipper was to sail, and—as
she had done on that long-ago occasion of Lister’s departure for his
first cruise—she walked up the beach beyond the farthest edge of the
town, and stood there, very silent, waving her handkerchief as long as
the _Sea Gull’s_ white wings could be seen.
Then, her eyes rather blurred, it must be confessed, by the tears she
was gallantly winking back, but her lips quite steady, she turned back
toward home.
As she tramped sturdily along the beach she glanced over her shoulder
just once, at the now empty ocean.
“Still, two years aren’t such a _very_ long time to wait,” Erica told
herself in a determinedly-cheerful tone, and her fingers went up to
touch a small, silver-and-jade key that hung on a knotted Chinese cord
about her neck. She even managed a determinedly-cheerful smile to match
the tone.
After all—at sixteen—two years really _aren’t_.
THE END