CHAPTER XV.
ALIVE!
When Rosamond Arleigh struck the water in her mad descent down the steep sandy bank, she gave herself up for lost.
The cold, dark water closed swiftly over her, and she sunk for a moment out of sight; then she rose to the surface, and with numbed hands clutched wildly at the nearest object, even as the drowning man will clutch at a straw. Her hands came in contact with a huge pine log. She grasped its rough bark; her hands slipped, and she fell once more.
She had lost her slippers—one was in the carriage, the other imbedded in the wet sand near the edge of the stream. Her cloak had slipped from her shoulders; she was utterly unprotected from the cold water, and a chill struck to her very heart.
It was intensely dark. She could not see which way the carriage had gone; but it had gone, and that was enough to revive a feeble hope within her heart.
If only Gilbert Warrington would not miss her until he was so far away that she might have time and a chance to escape, then indeed there was hope. But how could she escape?
It was dark and cold; the stream was deep and treacherous, and the current swift and strong. Besides, the logs and débris in the water choked up its course, and it was positively dangerous for an expert swimmer to attempt to make his way through the swift, dark tide, at that hour.
It all flashed through her bewildered brain with the rapidity with which thought flashes at such a time, when one is upon the verge of drowning. She tried hard to grasp the situation, but her brain was weak and numb from the strange experience through which she had passed, and she could not collect her thoughts, nor do anything to help herself; only, with a vague impulse of self-preservation, the first law of nature, she struck out blindly, with a faint hope of reaching shore.
Clutching at the tall, tough grass and native shrubs which grew near, she might have eventually succeeded, for she was desperate; but all at once, with a rush and a roar and a plunge down the stream, a small raft of cypress logs fastened together came tearing madly, under the direction of a stout negro in a small boat, who evidently superintended the raft.
On came the logs, and poor Rosamond, directly in their way, was utterly powerless to escape, while the negro in the boat could not possibly see what was ahead of him; and, of course, he would not be on the lookout for such a phenomenon as a woman struggling in the cold, dark water alone at that unearthly hour.
Somehow it flashed across Rosamond’s understanding; she realized her awful danger. She half arose in the water and shrieked aloud at the top of her voice:
“Help! help!”
On rushed the logs! The negro in the boat, half convinced that he had seen a ghost in that one swift glimpse of a death-white face and long, dark, streaming hair, which for a brief space confronted him, paused in the act of rowing, and uttered an imprecation.
“Gor a’mighty! what dat?” he exclaimed. “‘Pears like thar’s a woman—a white woman—or a ha’nt! Don’t jis’ know which a one, but ’twas one or t’odder, sho’!”
He guided his boat dexterously around the side of the small raft, but not in time to avert the threatened calamity, for with a mad rush the logs dashed onward, striking poor Rosamond full in the head with a blow which might have felled an ox. Without a cry or a moan, she sunk swiftly out of sight, and all was still.
The negro, trembling like a leaf, had witnessed the catastrophe, just a moment too late. He fastened his boat to the raft and sprung into the water.
“I isn’t gwine ter sit here and see no woman drowned,” he muttered as he dived beneath the surface.
A moment later; then the water was agitated, and once more the negro arose on the dark bosom of the water, grasping in his arms the unconscious form of Rosamond Arleigh.
With some difficulty he succeeded in placing her in the bottom of his boat, and getting in himself, began to pull for dear life, but not to the shore that she had left. He was afraid of being punished for allowing the lady to drown, and he firmly believed that she was dead.
He made up his mind in a moment. He would go on to New Orleans. There were no more obstacles now in the way of his raft, which would glide swiftly on into the lake, to be towed over by some schooner. He determined, therefore, to convey the body to New Orleans, and have it buried by the authorities. Perhaps it could be managed so that no questions would be asked, and he would not be punished for his carelessness.
He rowed onward with all his might, until the veins in his arms stood out like whip-cords and the perspiration trickled in a steady stream down his ebony face.
It occurred to him all at once that even when the lake would be reached, it would be difficult to persuade a schooner captain to convey the dead body to the city. Perhaps it would be better to bury it in the sand at the mouth of the stream, and no one would be the wiser.
But the first faint gleams of morning sunrise showed an unexpected sight. The woman was still alive!
