Cape Cod Folks Part 37

"And if he ain't, ma," replied Grandpa Keeler, sententiously, "he'll know what it is to be out in a squall! but I reckon he's looked out for himself."

The old Captain's face grew graver; his eyes, in that closed room, which had grown so suddenly dark, took on an intensely solemn look. He did not attempt the narration of any stormy adventures of old. Perhaps the scenes of the past rose too vividly before his eyes. But, as the fiercest gusts came, he kept muttering:--

"I knew what it meant--mild winter on the Cape! There's the devil in the old Cape weather, teacher, and he never skipped four seasons yit! If it ain't one time, it must be another. Yis, yis! mild winter on the Cape, and no March to speak on, and a hurricane in summer! Wall, we're both on us right, ma, and we're both on us wrong. It ain't neither wind ner rain, but the heavens let loose, and G.o.d A'mighty's own power a blowin' of it.

Yis, yis! I had my misgivin's all along; thinks I, better a little more weather now, than to blast every livin' thing by and by; but I hadn't no idee o' this! The Lord ha' mercy! The Lord ha' mercy!"

For all that one could see through the windows was a great black sheet of driving rain, and the roar of the storm was terrible. The Ark shook. It seemed, at each successive blast, as though the walls would fall in over our heads. One could easily imagine the whole crazy structure borne onward before the resistless tempest, to take a final wild leap from the cliffs.

"Wallencamp's a gittin' all mixed up," said Grandpa, without the faintest tinge of humor, now. "We sha'n't know where to find ourselves when we git out o' this 'ere, ef we ever do git out on't. Lord ha' mercy!"

Madeline sat very white and still, resting her chin on her hands, her great eyes staring out.

Grandma held the two frightened children in her lap. She was rocking and singing to them in a low, crooning tone. Though she was pale and her lips trembled, there was still about her a soothing atmosphere of peace.

I was frightened, like the children. I longed to cry out as they had done; to bury my head away from the terrors somewhere, as they did in Grandma's lap.

"That was the blackest squall," said Grandpa Keeler, afterwards; "that ever swep' across the Cape!"

Terrible as it had been, it died quickly. The transition seemed miraculous from the sullen roar of the wind and torrent-fall of rain, to the renewed chirping of the birds, the quiet dripping of the eaves, and suns.h.i.+ne over all.

But the young peach-tree that had stood by the window of the Ark, and sent its fragrance into my little room above, lay p.r.o.ne upon the ground.

When she saw that, Grandma Keeler moaned heart-brokenly, as though it had been some fair human life stripped suddenly of its promise and left to wither fruitlessly.

There were traces of the storm everywhere. Trees that had stood isolated in the fields lay, some of them, with roots exposed; others were broken off at the trunk, left with only a branch or two, helpless figures with outstretched arms, to give a weird desolation to the landscape by and by, I thought with a shudder, when winter should come again to Wallencamp.

The fences--what remained of them from former depredations--had either fallen utterly to the ground, or a.s.sumed a strikingly precarious position.

Part of the roof of Mr. Randal's house had been blown off, and the chimneys of several of the Wallencamp houses demolished, and Grandpa's barn twisted and distorted almost beyond recognition.

That poor old gentleman put on his hat and stepped out of the door cautiously, looking about him like one in a dream.

The Ark had stood firm, apparently, in its old resting-place. Grandma and Madeline proceeded to sweep out the rain which had been driven in through the cracks, and then it was that little Henry G. came running, with a white face, to the door. He had an air of childish importance, too, as being the first to bear tidings of some strange and dreadful event, and eager to hasten to other doors.

"Where's the rest?" he gasped, seeing only me in the room. "You tell 'em, teacher, Lute Cradlebow's drownded!" and the boy disappeared, without another word.

I was already faint from the reaction of the excitement incident to the storm, weak with the effort I had made to "hold myself still." I heard Grandma calling quickly, "Child! child!" I saw her coming towards me, and then I lost consciousness.

At evening, while the sun went down over the hill by which the transfigured river flowed, Captain Sartell sat in the door of the Ark, and told the story.

The marvellous light was on his face, too. It fell, in shafts of glory, on the bright foliage of the fallen tree.

Grandma was at G.o.dfrey Cradlebow's, but Grandpa Keeler was within the Ark, and Madeline caressing her children with a new fondness. There were a few of the neighbors present; they looked neither frightened nor curious, but ineffably exalted.

"We'd got our work about done," said Captain Sartell, speaking mechanically and with little of his customary hesitation of manner. "As near as I calk'late, there wa'n't a half hour's more work to do on the old craft, and it had got to be sometime arter noon, but says the boys, 'Let's finish her off, now we've got so near through, and not have to come back ag'in.' They was always a cheery set--especially _him_--when they took hold of a job, to put it through.

"We'd seen them sailin' fellows go by a while before; and we knew Rollin was one of 'em. They wasn't but two, as we could see, managin' the craft; and they was full sail, clippin' it lively. I calk'late there ain't many knows this sh.o.r.e better'n me, but I wouldn't 'a' durst skirted along the adge down thar' at sech a rate, not in the finest day blowin'. First, we thought it was somebody didn't know what they was about. When we made out it was Rollin, we knew, if he _was_ drunk, he was tol'able well acquainted with the rocks along sh.o.r.e, and 'ud probably put further out when he got through showin' off. We didn't worry about 'em, nor think no more about 'em, in special. The boys didn't want to talk to rile George Olver.

"So we kep' to work, and in a minute, cheery ag'in with the hammers click, clickin'--and every now and then the boys 'ud strike up a singin'

something'. 'Beyond the River,' and 'Homeward Bound.'

"It sounded dredful purty down thar' by the water, with the water and the wideness all around sorter softenin' of it. It made a man feel curious and wishful somehow.

"Well, by and by, _him_ and George Olver struck up a song. I've heern 'em sing it before, them two. As nigh as I calk'late, it's about findin' rest in Jesus, and one a askin' questions, all fa'r and squar', to know the way and whether it's a goin' to lead thar' straight or not, and the other answerin'. And _he_--he was a tinkerin', 'way up on the foremast, George Olver and the rest on us was astern,--and I'll hear to my dyin' day how his voice came a floatin' down to us thar'--chantin'-like it was--cl'ar and fearless and slow. So he asks, for findin' Jesus, ef thar's any marks to foller by; and George Olver, he answers about them bleedin'

nail-prints, and the great one in His side. So then that voice comes down ag'in, askin' if thar's any crown, like other kings, to tell Him by; and George Olver, he answers straight about that crown o' thorns. Then says that other voice, floatin' so strong and cl'ar, and if he gin up all and hollered, what should he have? what now?

"So George Olver, he sings deep o' the trial and the sorrowin'. But that other voice never shook, a askin', and what if he helt to Him to the end, what then should it be, what then? George Olver answers: 'Forever-more, the sorrowin' ended--Death gone over.'

"Then he sings out, like his mind was all made up, 'And if he undertook it, would he likely be turned away?'

"'And it's likelier,' George Olver answers him; 'that heaven and earth shall pa.s.s.'

"So I'll hear it to my dyin' day--his voice a floatin' down to me from up above thar', somewhar', askin' them questions that n.o.body could ever answer like, so soon, he answered 'em for himself--and when I looked up, thar' was Harvey, with his hammer dropped, and his mouth wide open, a starin' up thar', and the tears rollin' down his cheeks like he was a baby.

"They didn't sing no more, after that. They was still for about five minutes, I calk'late. Harvey, he was still, too; but pretty soon, he wakes up and says, 'Gad, boys! Did ye ever see sech a queer look in the sky? I believe thar's a September gale brewin'."

"'It's a little wind storm, I reckon,' says Bachelder. Bachelder was settin', with his legs curled up under him, mendin' sail, and he begun to spin one o' them yarns o' hisn, with his voice pitched up middlin' high, and the boys, they begun to laugh and cheer.

"Then Harvey says; 'I'll run up to headquarters, and find out about the weather;' and clim' up the main-mast as limber as a squirrel, and when he came back, thar' was Tommy's hat stickin' way up top o' the mast; so Tommy, he promised to pay him--them two was always foolin' together, but good-natered enough." The captain introduced this little incident, in the midst of his narration, with a dull, pathetic gravity, "It was the last thing we thought on, o' bein' fearful, or calk'latin' any danger. We reckoned it was a brisk little shower comin' up, maybe, and the boys was runnin' one another about gittin' into the cabin, and runnin' on about the old craft.

"Then thar' come, all of a sudden, sech a strange feelin', as ef the 'arth and the water was a tremblin', and a dreadful moanin' sound runnin'

through 'em. Seemed as though it came swirlin' across the bay. Then it bust on us in a fury.

"He was out, sorter lookin' around him, Bachelder was, and the wind took Bachelder up, and keeled 'im over two or three times runnin'.

"Black it grew as the Jedgement day. Then come no sich rain as ever I see, even the pourin'est, but the clouds fallin' all to once, and the wind a scatterin' of 'em, and up on the cliffs, we could jest hear a creakin' and a bendin' whar' the trees was turned as white as ghosts in that 'ere blackness, and the old Bay, in sech a minute, was spinnin' into foam.

"We was shelterin' around the old craft now, sure enough, and n.o.body speakin' a word, but jest a holdin' our breaths a waitin', when, in among them other noises, thar' come, out on the water, sech a low, dull sound as sent the awful truth on us in a minute, and for a minute, that ar'

right hand of mine was numb.

"Then Harvey, he had hold o' me, a pintin' out, and whether he spoke a word or not, I seen it--through wind and rain and foam, all in my eyes to once, I seen--reelin' and tossin' and pitching out thar' on the Bay, lost, lost for sure--I seen that fancy s.h.i.+p!

"Thar' wa'n't no hand on 'arth could guide it, now. Every second was like to see it keeled squar' over, or slipped and driv' in, straight on to the rocks.

"We're used to other'n fa'r weather along this sh.o.r.e. I calk'late we ain't used to frighten at a little danger, but knowin' the sea so well, we know the helplessness a'most o' puttin' out in sech a gale as that.

"I heered the sound. It only came but once: and Bede hissed through his teeth, a cryin' too, a'most: 'Ain't thar' no other way to werry us, but they must come in here to drown afore our very eyes! A fool's ventur'!

what could ye expect but a fool's end! Ef he must drown, let the red-haired devil drown!'

"But when they heered it, them two, _him_ and George Olver, I knowed how it would be. I hardly durst to look. I seen them flash at one another with their great eyes, as ef it wa'n't enough to do man's work, but when thar' come a chance, they must go act like G.o.d! I seen in jest that flash, them two agreein' solemnly.

"Then it was all done in a minute's s.p.a.ce, like you'll live yer life through sometimes, in a dream. They had Bill Barlow's eight-oar ready.

They pushed us back. They'd a' gone alone, them two. I kep' the third place. Harvey and Tommy scuffled, in a breath, and Harvey, he thrust Tommy back, and we was off.

"G.o.d knows I never expected we'd come back again. You heern the wind. You can calk'late what it was out thar' with the rain a drivin', and the salt foam blowed into our eyes. I calk'late we never fetched a harder pull, no, nor a blinder one.

"And she, the cursed thing, mad with twitchin' at her cable, lay over to one side. But she was dyin' mad. I tell ye she was dyin' mad. Thar' was them two a hangin' to her--thar' hadn't be'n but them. So we hauled Rollin in, but that other one, when he seen us, the chance o' bein'

saved, it crazed him, and he sent up a quick, glad sort of a yell and throwed his arms out straight, and back he fell, like lead, into the water. And Rollin, crouchin' thar' and s.h.i.+verin', 'He couldn't swim! He's sunk! he's sunk!' he says. Then _he_, he ris up in a flash, and out he dove into that h.e.l.l.