“Not—not rightly friends, perhaps I shouldn’t call ’em,” Joe admitted, still studying the planks with attention. “But—well” (and his face brightened visibly), “I ain’t got no enemies. There’s where it is, you see, Isly, I ain’t got no enemies, so there’s nothin’ to hender my goin’ over to the main, so long as Cap’n Zekle has no objection.”
He drew a long breath after this statement, and ventured to steal a look at Isla out of the corner of his eye. But Isla thought little of what he said. She accepted the homage of the queer man who had loved her father; it seemed entirely natural that Joe Brazybone should be devoted to her; but she gave him little thought beyond a kindly feeling, and a consciousness that she could make him happy for a day by smiling and nodding to him, even though she seldom spoke. Now she had said far more than usual, and she thought no more of his matters. Her thoughts still flew forward to the new life, the prisoned life in which Jacob would be all her sun and air, her world, her joy, as she would be his. But her eyes turned backward with passionate longing toward the home that they were leaving. The schooner moved swiftly, sailing along the southern shore. Now they were coming to the South Rocks, her own rocks, where half of her heart must stay, while her body went on, away. They passed the opening of the Dead Valley. It seemed as if the sleeping mammoths must rise from their long slumber and call to her; as if every crag and cliff, every ragged, friendly tree, must see her desertion and cry out upon it. Her eyes strained backward as the schooner flew, the heart seemed torn out of her breast. See! The ravens, rising from a tufted fir, and sailing slowly above the valley. Were they looking for her? Would they know why she had gone, how it killed her to go? Now the wild birds flapped toward the shore, uttering a harsh cry; and it smote on the girl’s heart like a reproach. An answering cry rose to her lips, but she forced it back, and, turning resolutely away, fixed her eyes on little Jacob’s face. The boy was smiling happily at the bright waves as they rose and fell around the schooner; and Isla took his hand in hers and saw her sunshine in his face.
CHAPTER IX.
THE NEW SCHOLARS.
“AND how are the two new scholars doing?” asked the trustee.
The principal smiled, and then sighed, and shook her head. “They are doing extremely well,” she said; “but—”
“But?” said the trustee.
“I don’t make them out at all,” said the principal. “That is,—oh, the little boy, of course, is just a good little fellow, not too bright, but with the sunniest, sweetest disposition in the world. It is the girl that puzzles me. It is incredible that she should know as much as she does, if she has been always deaf; yet it is evident that she has been taught no lip-reading; and her signs are none of the regular ones, but a language of her own, that she carries on with the little brother. She will not answer any questions that we put in writing; just smiles, a kind of thrilling smile, that goes to one’s heart,—I don’t know how to describe it,—and puts out her hand and strokes yours, and—and somehow, one doesn’t ask her anything more. She comes from an island, she writes, and the parents are dead, and she and the boy are wholly alone.”
The trustee mused.