“Oh, do, sir! do hurry!” said Miss Joe, and in five minutes more Lionel Hardcastle, with the dark and lowering brow of a fiend hidden by the night, was galloping swiftly toward the coast, muttering in his heart: “Now, scornful girl, shall my love and vengeance both be sated!”
In the meantime Garnet had reached the shore at which the Mount Calm fleet of boats were chained—boats of all sizes, from the long skiff to the twelve-oared canoe and the sail-boat. She entered the smallest of the skiffs, followed by Pompey, who immediately unlocked the chain, took the single oar, and pushed off from the sandy beach. The bay was perfectly smooth, and reflected the dark, resplendent sky, with its myriads beyond myriads of shining lights so distinctly that the little skiff seemed to glide among the stars as it sped over the waters. Soon before then lay Hutton’s Island, like a darker line upon the sea. And there, like a single star, shone the solitary light! Yet so much deeper was Garnet’s love of nature than of adventure, that she delivered herself up to intense enjoyment of the starlight night on the waters, forgetful of her errand, until the slight shock of the skiff, touching upon the strand of the island, aroused her from her trance. Then, when she looked up, the light on the isle was gone.
“That is very provoking! Now who would have thought that darkly and silently as we came we should have been perceived? However, light your pine knot, Pompey, and come along.”
Pompey had been selected as her attendant in this expedition by Miss Seabright, as being the least superstitious and cowardly of all her men, yet now the namesake of “The Invincible” shrank back in dread, muttering:
“Indeed, indeed, miss, you’d better not!”
“Pompey! whoever the dweller on this isle is, it is some poor wretch, more worthy of our pity than of our fear; weak and timid, since it watches and hides from even such harmless visitors as we. Come along!”
“’Deed—’deed, miss, that aint good reasonin’! ’Deed, ’fore my Heavenly Marster, aint, miss. ’Deed—’deed—’deed—’deed——” muttered Pompey, his teeth chattering, until he lost his voice.
“Give me the torch then, Pompey; I will go before. You may follow me as distantly as you please, and run at the first alarm!”
“I think that would be the mos’ safes’, miss; caze dey wouldn’t be so apt to shoot a young lady, miss, as they would to shoot a colored gemman ob my siteration in deciety.”
Without hearing Pompey’s compromise with his cowardice and his conscience, Miss Seabright, torch in hand, walked up the gradually ascending rise of ground to the ruins of the old lodge. From being so long out in the night her eyes had become accustomed to it, so that now, under the brilliant starlight, the scene was distinctly, though darkly, before her—the ruin, the isle, and the sea. No sign of fence or outhouse could be seen as she approached the ruined lodge, whose skeleton walls stood up square around what seemed a deep, stagnant pond, whose stillness was drearily broken by the plunge of some toad, snake, or other loathsome reptile. Blinded or scared by the glare of the torch, bats flitted to and fro about the ruined walls, water rats ran in and out among the broken stones, and plunged into the stagnant waters, and lastly, a huge screech-owl took flight from the blasted tree by the fallen chimney, “making night hideous” with his yells. Profoundly saddened by seeing the beloved home of her wild childhood so desolate, Garnet turned silently away, and passing mournfully over the bleak ground, reached the strand. Then passing slowly all around the beach, she looked out upon the waters in search of any stray boat that might contain the supposed fugitive of the isle. As far as the eye could reach no sign of a boat could be seen. She then turned inland—if the tiny isle could be said to have an inland—and searched carefully about, walking around every specterlike tree standing far apart on the bare, bleak island, and quite incapable after all of concealing the smallest possible fugitive in the human shape. But she looked around and up into them, as I have seen men look under candlesticks and into tiny drawers for their missing hats, umbrellas, and boot-jacks! After her thorough search was quite over she turned to her attendant, and said: