“Who—who are ye?” asked the captain, in a stout voice which quavered strangely. “Are ye a livin’ woman? Say quick, before I heave ye out o’ here.”
“Oh, Captain Ezekiel, it is Isla! Isla Heron! Take me home, will you? Home to the island. I am never going away again.”
“And when we come to the beach,” said the captain, telling about it afterwards, “and I was just thinkin’ how I would get the poor child home to my house and get her warm, and then mebbe she’d feel like tellin’ me where she come from and all about it,—I was just thinkin’, when out she jumps like a flash, and says, ‘Thank you, captain!’ that pretty way she had, and she was gone, up and out over the rocks, quicker’n any bird I ever saw fly.”
Up and over the rocks! Oh, the good rocks, gray and black, with their clinging lichens of orange and russet! Oh, the friendly touch of them on her feet as she ran! The beach, with its white shell-sand disfigured by heads and entrails of fish, had no charm to stay the girl for an instant. The rocks drew her. Over them, away and away, round the point where the cliff nodded outward; there was home, and rest, and peace. The light broadened and brightened, the sea turned from gray to blue again, the grass shimmered in green and gold, for it was buttercup time. Isla stopped now and again to lay her hand on some well-known stone, to greet an old tree that had been her friend ever since she could remember. The ravens were still asleep, were they? Lazy old ravens; how she would startle them! But they would see that she came alone. She moaned, and ran on the faster.
Past the Dead Valley now. They were sleeping, too, the old mammoths,—they had never missed her, had never known how she dreamed of them, how she longed for them. The sea knew; it murmured and sang to her, telling her over and over again, how glad it was to see her home again. Now, only one more point to round, and she was home indeed. The strip of white sand where Jacob had slept that last time she ever left him till now, the roll of seaweed that marked the boundary line; then through the swampy bit, and up into the little green glade, where the cottage clung to the wall of the sheltering cliff behind it. Isla stood and looked where her home should be, and saw a heap of ashes, gray as the rock behind them, with charred beams scattered here and there.