There they were, upright, tranquil, immense hyacinths--their spear-points three feet above the water, their feathery streamers drifting six feet below; the broad, waxy leaves floating above their bulbous surface mats--they came on silently under the stars; they vanished under the stars seaward to their death.
"Yeh!" roared Tedge. "Sun and sea to-morry--they'll be back on Au Fer like dried bones o' dead men in the sand! Bear east'ard off of 'em!"
The oarsman struggled in the deeper pass water. The skiff bow suddenly plunged into a wall of green-and-purple bloom. The points brushed Tedge's cheek. He cursed and smote them, tore them from the low bow and flung them. But the engineman stood up and peered into the starlight.
"Yeh'll not make it. Better keep up the port shore. I cain't see nothin' but lilies east'ard--worlds o'flowers comin' with the _crevasse_ water behind 'em." He dipped a finger to the water, tasted of it, and grumbled on: "It ain't hardly salt, the big rivers are pourin' such a flood out o' the swamps. Worlds o' flowers comin' out the passes--"
"Damn the flowers!" Tedge arose, shaking his fist at them. "Back out o' 'em! Pull up the Au Fer side, and we'll break through 'em in the bay!"
Against the ebb tide close along Au Fer reef, the oarsman toiled until Crump, the lookout, grumbled again.
"The shoal's blocked wi' 'em! They're stranded on the ebb. Tedge, yeh'll have to wait for more water to pass this bar inside 'em. Yeh try to cross the pass, and the lilies 'll have us all to sea in this crazy skiff when the wind lifts wi' the sun."
"I'm clean wore out," the black man muttered. "Yeh can wait fer day and tide on the sand, boss."
"Well, drive her in, then!" raged the skipper. "The in-tide'll set before daylight. We'll take it up the bay."
He rolled over the bow, knee-deep in the warm inlet water, and dragged the skiff through the shoals. Crump jammed an oar in the sand; and warping the headline to this, the three trudged on to the white dry ridge. Tedge flung himself by the first stubby grass clump.
"Clean beat," he muttered. "By day we'll pass 'em. Damn 'em--and I'll see 'em dyin' in the sun--lilies like dried, dead weeds on the sand--that's what they'll be in a couple o' days--he said they was pretty, that fello' back there--" Lying with his head on his arm, he lifted a thumb to point over his shoulder. He couldn't see the distant blotch of fire against the low stars--he didn't want to. He couldn't mark the silent drift of the sea gardens in the pass, but he gloated in the thought that they were riding to their death. The pitiless sun, the salt tides drunk up to their spongy bulbs, and their glory passed--they would be matted refuse on the shores and a man could trample them. Yes, the sea was with Tedge, and the rivers, too; the flood waters were lifting the lilies from their immemorable strongholds and forcing them out to their last pageant of death.