The Broad Highway

by Jeffery Farnol

BOOK TWO

THE WOMAN

CHAPTER I

OF STORM, AND TEMPEST, AND OF THE COMING OF CHARMIAN

I was at sea in an open boat. Out of the pitch-black heaven there rushed a mighty wind, and the pitch-black seas above me rose high, and ever higher, flecked with hissing white; wherefore I cast me face downwards in my little boat, that I might not behold the horror of the waters; and above their ceaseless, surging thunder there rose a long-drawn cry:

"Charmian!"

I stood upon a desolate moor, and the pitiless rain lashed me, and the fierce wind buffeted me; and, out of the gloom where frowning earth and heaven met—there rose a long-drawn cry:

"Charmian."

I started up in bed, broad awake, and listening; yet the tumult was all about me still—the hiss and beat of rain, and the sound of a rushing, mighty wind—a wind that seemed to fill the earth—a wind that screamed about me, that howled above me, and filled the woods, near and far, with a deep booming, pierced, now and then, by the splintering crash of snapping bough or falling tree. And yet, somewhere in this frightful pandemonium of sound, blended in with it, yet not of it, it seemed to me that the cry still faintly echoed:

"Charmian."