“Ger-long! Ger-long! Mo-ses!”
“I don’t see how we are to get on here at all at night,” said Miss Bruce.
But before night the marsh ended as suddenly as it had begun, and the Altamaha was gliding onward again between banks equally low and near, but made of solid earth, not reeds. The sun sank in the west, the gorgeous colors of the American sunset flamed in the sky. The returning American welcomed them. She was not happy; she was as far as possible from being what is called amiable; but for the moment she admired, forgetting her own griefs. Then the after-glow faded; Meadows brought a shawl from their tiny cabin and folded it round her mistress; it was the 23d of December, and the evening air was cool, but not cold. By-and-by in the dusky twilight a gleam shone out ahead, like an immense star.
“What is that, captain?” Miss Bruce asked, as this official happened to pass near her chair.
“That? Jupiter Light.”
“Then we must be near Warwick?” She gave to the name its English pronunciation, the only one she knew.
The captain declined to say whether they were near it or not, as it was a place he had never heard of. “The next landing is War-wick,” he announced, impersonally, pronouncing the name according to its spelling.
“So near?” said Miss Bruce, rising.
“No hurry. Ain’t there yet.”
And so it proved. A moon rose, and with it a mist. The Altamaha, ceasing her nosing progress through the little channels, turned sharply eastward, and seemed suddenly to have entered the ocean, for great waves began to toss her and knock her about with more and more violence, until at last the only steady thing in sight was the blazing star of Jupiter Light, which still shone calmly ahead. After half an hour of this rough progress a low beach presented itself through the mist, and the blazing star disappeared, its place being taken by a spectral tower, tall and white, which stood alone at the end of a long curving tongue of sand. The steamer, with due caution, drew near a lonely little pier.