“Sartainly,--sartainly,” his big voice boomed out on the air, responsive to the caution, “Me an’ de Major have been through a heap worse troublements dan dis yere.”
And, indeed, surely and safely he went down the stair, buffeted by the wind and drenched by the rain and the spray leaping from its impact on the surface of the water.
Hildegarde herself descended as easily as a fawn might bound down a hill, to Colonel Kenwynton’s amazement, accustomed to lend the ladies of his day a supporting arm. She sprang upon the gunwale of the yawl in so lightsome a poise that it scarcely tipped beneath her weight before she was seated beside the old blind soldier, joyous, reassuring and hopeful.
“It is hard to be in danger and unable to help others or even to see and judge of the situation,” he said meekly, bending forward under the down-pour, his face pallid and wrinkled, its expression of groping wistfulness most appealing.
“Yes, indeed,” she assented, her voice sounding amidst the rain like the song of a bird from out a summer shower. “But I think all this hubbub is for nothing,--the sky is going to clear, I believe, toward the west. Still, the next packet can take us off at Duciehurst as well as from the _Cherokee Rose_.” “And, Major,” with a blithe rising inflection, “I can see a veritable ante-bellum mansion, and you can go over it with me and explain the life of the old times. You can refurnish it, Major! You can tell me what ought to stand here and there, and what sort of upholstery and curtains the ‘Has-Beens’ used to affect.”
His old face was suddenly relumed with this placid expectation; his brain was once more thronged with reminiscences. He lifted his aged head and gazed toward the clearing west and the radiant past, both beginning to relent to a gentle suffusion of restored peace.
In this transient illumination the great dun-tinted forests that lined the banks showed dimly, as well as the vast river swirling intervenient, tawny, murky, but with sudden mad whorls of white foam where the current struck some obstruction flung into its course by the storm. The wreck of the _Cherokee Rose_ was very melancholy as a spectacle since, but for the hurricane, she would have been floated in five minutes more of the deluge of rain. The yawl seemed a tiny thing, painfully inadequate, as it rocked with a long tilt on the swaying undulations of the current. The preparations for departure were going swiftly forward; another boat was in process of loading with material comforts, cots, bedding, all under tarpaulins, boxes and hampers of provisions, and the trunks and suit-cases of passengers. Since escape was now possible and at hand, one or two of the faint-hearted began to experience anew that reluctance to removal, that doubt of an untried change so common to the moment of decision. “It is a long way--ten miles in this wind,” said one, “how would it do for a few of us to try that swamper’s shack on the bank? The yawl is overloaded, anyhow.”