His hand was stroking Peter's and for a moment Peter bent down until his face was close to his father's. Donald was silent but his hand continued its caressing touch. After a little he said:
"Did I hear something, Peter?"
"I think it was thunder. A storm must be following in the trail of the fire."
"I mean out there—near at hand. It was like wood striking on wood."
He sank back and Peter reached down and made his head comfortable. "This makes me think of that last night in the woods when you tucked me in my cedar-bough bed and told me to sleep," he whispered gently. "And I'm telling you that now, dad. It's what you need. Try and sleep!"
Even as he spoke he heard the distant sound again and knew it was the clank of oarlocks. He fastened the tiller so that Simon's boat was heading for the open sea. Then he crept forward and returned with a blanket, and this blanket he quietly unfolded in the darkness, taking from it the weapon which Simon had loaded and placed there for his use. And Simon's words were running over and over in his head, as steady as the ticking of a clock. "Take care of him, Peter. It's your job now to beat the law."
As the minutes passed it seemed to Peter that sound became a living, stealthy part of the night, creeping about him in ghostly whispers, hiding behind the canvas sail, rustling where the water moved under the bow, purring at his feet and in the air. This impression of sound by its smallness and its secretiveness served to emphasize the hush which had fallen upon a burned and blasted world. Its muteness bore with it a quality of solemnity and a quickening thrill as if subjugated forces were muffled and bound and might unleash themselves without warning. In this stillness Peter heard the thunder creeping up faintly behind the path of fire. But the sound of the oar did not come again.
He strained his eyes to pierce the gloom even though he knew the effort was futile and senseless. The red line of the fire was steadily receding. In places it was lost. Where he had left the cliff and the sandy strip of beach was a black chaos, and it was this darkness with its silence which seemed to reach into his heart and choke him with its oppression and foreboding.
Through the stillness a sound came to him, floating softly over the sea, sweet and distant. His fingers slowly unclasped and he bowed his head. It was the bell over the little church of logs and Father Albanel was tolling it. Even now in this smoke-filled hour of the night he was calling the people of the settlement together that they might offer up in prayer their gratitude because homes and loved ones had been spared by the red death that had swept the land. It was like a living voice, gently sweet and soothing as it brought him faith and reverence. There was a God! Every fiber in his body leaped to that cry of his heart. Without a God his father would have died, the whole world would have burned, there would be no Mona, no hope, no anything for him in the darkness of the freedom which lay ahead. His lips moved with Mona's prayer and he stood up quietly so that he might hear more clearly until the last peal of the bell died away. And when the gray silence shut him in again he felt as if a protecting spirit had come to ride with him in the gloom.