The Storm Centre: A Novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

But Mr. Wray, too, added his insistence. "Nothing could be better," he declared.

And as Mr. Burrage demurred, and half apologized, and was distinctly out of countenance, Mr. Wray compassionately overlooked all his disquieting cautions and protested with cordiality that the change would be an advantage. Some difficulty might arise, some reluctance to deliver the cotton they had already purchased, some doubt as to the locality where it was stored,—they used this expression rather than "hidden," though Julius apprehended that its cache was now a cane-brake and now a rock house or cave, and now a tongue of dry land in a network of bayous and swamps,—some failure of facilities in respect to men or water carriage or land transportation, with all of which this young gentleman, new to the arrangements and the enterprise, might find it difficult to cope successfully. Such unforeseen obstacles might require a divergence from the original plan and the agent's instructions. But Mr. Burrage, a member of the Company, could meet and provide for all these emergencies, and yet with such a guide be as assured and as confident of his footing in this strange country as if he himself were a native. It was the happiest suggestion! It enabled him to make a long arm, as it were, and manipulate the matter in effect without a proxy.

"And meantime it will be strange indeed if I cannot make a long leg!" thought Julius, triumphantly.

The actual Mr. Wray was treated everywhere with all possible consideration and due regard to the fact that he was a British subject. The neutrality of Great Britain was considered exceedingly precarious, and there was no disposition to twist the tail of the Lion, albeit this appendage was whisked about in a way that ever and anon provoked that catastrophe. The British Lion was supposed in some quarters to be solicitous of a grievance which would justify a roar of exceeding wrath. In this instance, however, there was no necessity of withholding the favor asked by a British subject, Mr. John Wray,—for a pass for his cousin, Mr. John Wray, Junior, of Manchester, England, and his friend, Mr. Alfred Burrage.

That night the two slept on the crowded steamer, as she was to cast off at a very early hour. Long, long did Julius lie awake in his berth in the tiny stateroom peculiar to the architecture of the "stern-wheeler." The good Mr. Burrage in the berth below snored in satisfaction with the events of the day, untroubled as to the morrow. Julius had been so tormented by vacillations, by the untoward "about-face" movements of the probable, so hampered by the unexpected, so repeatedly disappointed, that even now he could not believe in his good fortune. Something, somehow, would snatch the cup from his lips. But in the midst of his turmoil of emotion he had a distinct sense of gratitude that the preservation of his safety had involved no forwarding of equivocal interests. The affairs of the Company were doubtless such as many were seeking to prosecute with varying chances of success. He would report the scheme to his commanding officer, however, and he could forecast the reply, "One of hundreds." But, at all events, the map in his boot-lining was a matter of no slight import. He could hardly wait to spread it on a drumhead before his Colonel's eyes, and solicit the honor of leading the enterprise he had planned.

But was he, indeed, destined to escape, to come off scatheless from this heady venture!

"If ever I see the command again, by thunder, I'll stick to them as long as I live. If ever I can lay hold of my sword again, I swear my right hand shall never be far from its hilt!"

In the early hours of the night the loading of the cargo was still unfinished. The calls of the deck-hands, the vociferations of the mate, which were of an intensity, a fervor, a mad strenuousness, that might seem never heard before out of Bedlam, the clash and commotion of boxes and barrels, the lowing of cattle and bleating of sheep, for the lower deck was given over to the transportation of army supplies, sounded erratically, now louder, now moderated, dying away and again rising in agitated vibrations. Sometimes, as he lay, a great flare of light illumined the tiny apartment as the torches, carried by the roustabouts on shore, cast eerie vistas into the darkness, and he could see the closely fitted white planking of the ceiling just above his head, the white coverlet, and through the glass door, that served too as window, the railing of the guards without and the dim glimpse of the first street of the town—River Avenue—about on a level with his eye, so deep was the declivity to the wharf.

Quiet came gradually. The grating and shifting of the cargo ceased first; the boat was fully loaded at length. Then the voices became subdued,—once a snatch of song, and again a burst of laughing banter between the roustabouts going up into the town and the deck-hands about to turn in on the boat. Now it was so quiet that he could distinguish the flow of the current. Yet he could not sleep. Once he seemed near unconsciousness when he heard the clash of iron as the stoker was banking the fires, for steam was up. Then Julius lay in unbroken silence, till an owl hooted from out the Roscoe woods down the river. There was home! He thought of his father with so filial a tenderness that the mere recollection might be accounted a prayer. In that dense mass of foliage off toward the west, under the stars and the moon, stood the silent house, invisible at the distance, but every slant of the roof, every contour of the chimneys, every window and door,—nay, every moulding of the cornice, was as present to his contemplation as if he beheld it in floods of matutinal sunshine. "Oh, bless it!" he breathed. "Bless it, and all it holds!"

With dreary melancholy he fell to gazing out at the real instead,—at the vague slant to the wharf in the flickering moonlight, and the dim warning glow of a lantern on an obstructive pile of brick on the crest of River Avenue. Somehow the trivial thing had a spell to hold his eyes, as he watched it with a mournful, dull apprehension of what might betide, for he feared to hope still to escape—so often had this hope allured and disappointed him. Would something happen at the last moment—and what would the next disaster be?