Obviously there was no recourse. Paula perceived that she must compass her own retreat unaided. She rose with the determination to attempt the descent of the stairs. Then, trembling from head to foot, she sank down on the broad sill of the window. A sudden raucous voice broke upon the spectral silence, the still midnight.
CHAPTER IX
Paula looked down through the broken roof of the portico supported by the massive Corinthian columns. A group of men stood on the stone floor below, men of slouching, ill-favored aspect. She could not for one moment confuse them with the inmates of the house, now silent and asleep, although her first hopeful thought was that some nocturnal alarm had brought forth the refugees of the Cherokee Rose.
The newcomers made no effort at repression or secrecy. They could have had no idea that the house was occupied. Evidently they felt as alone, as secluded, as secure from observation, as if in a desert. They were not even in haste to exploit their design. A great brawny, workman-like man was taking to task a fellow in top-boots and riding-breeches.
“Why did you go off an’ leave Cap’n Treherne?” he asked severely.
The ex-jockey seemed somewhat under the influence of liquor, not now absolutely drunk, although hiccoughing occasionally—in that dolorous stage known as “sobering up.”
“If you expected me to stay here all that time, with no feed at all, you were clear out of the running,” he protested. “I lit out before the blow came, an’ after the storm was over I knowed you fellers couldn’t row back here against the current with the water goin’ that gait. So I took my time as you took yourn.”
The next speaker was of a curiously soaked aspect, as if overlaid with the ooze, and slime, and decay of the riverside, like some rotting log or a lurking snag, worthless in itself, without a use on either land or water, neither afloat nor ashore, its only mission of submerged malice to drive its tooth into the hull of some stanch steamer and drag it down, with its living freight, and its wealth of cargo, and its destroyed machinery, to a grave among the lifeless roots. His voice seemed water-logged, too, and came up in a sort of gurgle, so defective was his articulation.
“You-all run off an’ lef’ me las’ night, but Jessy Jane put me wise this mornin’, an’ I was away before the wind had riz. I stopped by here to see if you was about, but I declar’ if I had knowed that you had lef’ Cap’n Treherne in thar tied up like a chicken, I’m durned if I wouldn’t hey set him loose, to pay you back for the trick you played me. But I met up with Colty,” nodding at the jockey, “an’ we come back just now together.”
Binnhart’s brow darkened balefully as he listened to this ineffective threat while old Berridge chuckled.