Files of newspapers, already yellowed, can give the reader, who cares for details of such events, long accounts of the famous gale that suddenly lashed the western Atlantic to a fury of destruction in the autumn of 188–. It swept the rocky coasts of New England with a power that recent tempests have seldom equaled. Fishing-smacks, merchant craft of stalwart build, and yachts, belated in their return home, were dashed by dozens on the reefs of the Middle and Eastern States, swallowed up by the terrific sea that ran at its highest for days together, or, like empty soap-boxes in surf, were driven to shore. The death-list of seamen and others, unfortunate enough to be at the gale’s mercy or mercilessness ran well up into the hundreds. Nor was that all. For scores of miles inland travel was interrupted by wash-outs and cavings-in, on highways and railroads. The telegraph and mail-service were suspended in a dozen directions. Bridges were flooded or swept away as if by spring freshets. In the harbors and straits such tides swelled as made the oldest inhabitants of the villages along them shake in their shoes to hear measured and compared. For four days sheets of rain descended about Chantico with only brief pauses, and when the down-pouring from overhead lightened and at last ceased the wind and ocean were things to send dread into the spirits of even cool-headed skippers and spectators.
With every thing in the way of communicating with their friends brought to a stand-still, paralyzed, Philip and Gerald waited on Chantico Island, in company with the Probascos, and watched the whirling and seething clouds and sea. Obed, however, was not able to be with them very often after the second morning. His rheumatism awoke when he did, and it kept the poor man much in his bed and in pain enough to put other dilemmas out of his sympathy. Mrs. Probasco nursed him; “ran” the house; sat for half hours with Touchtone and Gerald, chatting cheerfully and telling long stories of her and Obed’s younger days, when they had lived on their parents’ farms, some miles back of Chantico. She kept a watchful eye on Gerald’s convalescence, and generally was like Cæsar in having “to do all things at one time,” and, like the mighty Julius, she did not complain of the situation.
The resources of the farm-house, except for Mrs. Obed’s lively talk, were modest in such an emergency. One could not put his head out of the door except the wind nearly blew it off. But any thing must needs have been of a wonderfully distracting sort to beguile, for Philip Touchtone, at least, hours that he knew must be costing their friends great suspense or deep grief. There was a backgammon-board, with the legend “History of England” on the back, deceiving nobody. Gerald found amusement in another quite astonishing pastime, entitled, as to its large and gaudy label, “The Chequered Game of Life: A Moral and Instructive Amusement for Youth of Both Sexes. By a Friend to Them.”
“I wonder if it is meant for us?” Gerald asked when he unearthed this ancient treasure. “I never heard of ‘youth of both sexes’ before. I thought people had to be either boys or girls.”
Philip partly spent one morning in teaching the solemn cat sundry tricks (much against patient pussy’s will), which afternoon showed she had not given herself the slightest trouble to remember. With Gerald at his elbow, to add accuracy to his notes, he “wrote up” his diary, which had been abiding safely in his traveling-satchel. The partial changes of linen and the convenient odds and ends that their satchels contained were of truly unexpected value now that their trunk was in the bottom of the sea, with the rest of the Old Province’s baggage. Mrs. Probasco took the opportunity to put their limited clothing into thorough order.
“Next time I come away on a short voyage I think I’ll pack all the things in my closet into a hand-bag!” Gerald exclaimed, ruefully, taking stock of their resources.
“Or send the trunk by land?” laughed Touchtone, grimly. “I’m glad, though, that there was nothing of downright value in the trunk that we couldn’t replace. When we get to Knoxport we can get a wardrobe together directly there, or wherever Mr. Marcy and your father advise. How lucky you didn’t put that daguerreotype of your mother in!—the one that is to be copied.”
“Yes,” answered the boy, seriously; “it was lucky. Papa would have felt as badly as I if that had been lost. It’s the only one we like.”
Touchtone could see that this prolonged separation of the boy from his father, in more than one sense, would bring them nearer to each other than they ever had been before. “And a precious good thing,” he soliloquized. “The best way to keep some fellows chums seems to have somebody give them both a sound shaking now and then. Perhaps this sort of thing for Gerald and Mr. Saxton amounts to that.” In spite of the resolute silence of Gerald, for the sake of his friend, on the great topic of his father’s or Mr. Marcy’s whereabouts and conclusions, Philip (who certainly did not try to introduce it) knew that most of the time Mr. Saxton was in Gerald’s mind.
“Do you know what I think?” he said abruptly, once, looking up from the backgammon-board, after having thrown his dice and placed his men abstractedly during several turns. “I don’t believe that I’ve appreciated papa very much, nor that he has appreciated me very much—till now.”