“If I could reach my ship,” he muttered.
“What ship, Daddy?”
“Why, my own––the ‘Jo Manning.’”
That took her back to the time she was a very little girl. She remembered now that he had named the ship after her,––the last ship which he had sailed out 324 of Newburyport. Poor old daddy! What a different man he was this moment from him who had held her in his arms and kissed her with tears rolling down his bronzed cheeks. It wrenched her heart to watch him sitting there so listlessly––so weakly––so little himself. The fear was growing in her heart that he never would be the same again. Almost––almost it was better to remember him as he was then than to know him as he sat there now. Had it not been for the comfort, for the joy of another order, for the safety she felt in this younger man by her side, her heart would have broken at the sight. If only she could have found him during those few days he was in Boston––when the crystals had first shown him to her––when he must have passed within a few feet of her, it might not then have been so difficult to rouse him. But at that time he would not have known his own.
A bedlam of raucous, clamorous shrieks settling into a crude sort of war cry brought all four of them to their feet. Wilson thrust the girl back of him towards the cave-like formation behind them. This effectually protected them in the rear and partly from two sides. Stubbs swept the bags of jewels into his arms and carried them to one corner of this natural excavation. Then he took his position by the side of Wilson and Manning, who was unarmed. The three waited the approach of the unseen demons. Not a light, not the glint of a weapon could be seen. But before their eyes, in and out among the trees making up the dense growth, shadows flitted back and 325 forth in a sort of ghost dance. In addition to the hoarse shouting, the air was rent from time to time by the sound of a blast as from a large horn.
The effect of this upon Manning, who had been thrust behind them by Wilson, was peculiar. At each blast he threw back his head and sniffed at the air as a war horse does at sound of the bugle. His eyes brightened, his lean frame quivered with emotion, his hands closed into tight knots. The girl, observing this, crept closer to him in alarm. She seized his arm and called to him, but he made no response.
“Father! Father!” she shouted above the din.
He started forward a pace, but she drew him back. Seeing her he came to himself again for a moment. She scarcely knew him; the old look of intensity which strained almost every feature out of the normal had transformed him. He stood now as it were between two personalities. He partially realized this, for he stepped forward behind Wilson and shouted:
“They come! They come! I––I think I can stop them––for a little. If––if I do, don’t delay––don’t wait for me.”
Wilson thought he rambled.