"Hush!" said the master, imperatively, "I will not think of it! It can't be! Noll? Oh, Hagar, I believe I'm going mad!" He turned away from the old negress and opened the door. The tempest swept in, overturning the candle and flaring up the fire, and bearing the rain, in one long gust, across the little kitchen, even into Hagar's face.
Trafford stood there, regardless of wind and rain, looking out upon the sea. The mighty tumult awed him and filled his heart with a sense of man's utter weakness and helplessness. The foamy expanse gleamed whitely through the night,—awful with the terror of death,—and its deafening roar smote upon his ears, and in the slightest lull, the rain-drops fell with a soft, dull patter. Noll in it all?—in this fearful, yawning sea,—in this wild tumult of wind and rain,—in the vast waste of waves which the thick darkness shrouded, and where death was riding? "God help me!" he cried in sudden frenzy,—"God help me!" He looked up at the thick, black depths of sky with a groan of agony when he remembered his utter powerlessness. But what right had he to look to Heaven for aid?—he who knew not God, nor sought him, nor desired his love? The bitterness of this thought made him groan and beat his breast. Would He—whom all his life long he had refused and rejected—hear his cries?
Hagar's voice came to him here through all the din and thunder, beseeching that the door might be closed. He closed it behind him, and stepped out into the darkness. It was already past the hour for the "Gull" to arrive, he remembered, and then a sudden thought flashed through his brain that beacons ought to be kindled to guide the skipper, if he were not already beyond the need of earthly guides and beacons. And close upon this thought came a remembrance of the Culm fishermen,—stout, skilful sailors, all of them,—and a great hope filled his heart that in them he might find aid in his extremity. And without waiting for a second thought, he started through the inky darkness and the tempest for Culm village. He ran till he was breathless. He climbed and groped his way over and along the slippery rocks, the awful voice of the sea filling his ears and goading him on.
CHAPTER XXII.
Weary Watching
he evening wore on. They were all on the beach,—Trafford and the Culm fishermen,—and now a beacon fire streamed up into the darkness, and made the night seem even more black and intense. They had piled their heap of driftwood somewhat in the shelter of a great rock, and around it the men were huddled, muttering and whispering to each other, and casting sober glances at Trafford, who stood apart from them in the shadow. Not a word had he spoken since the fire was kindled, but, grim and silent as a statue, had stood there, with his eyes looking upon the gleaming sea, and the rain beating in his face. He had worked desperately while gathering driftwood.
"The master be crazed, like," Dirk had whispered to the men as they came in with armfuls of fuel. "D'ye see his eyes? D'ye see the way he be runnin' up an' down, poor man?"