Elmer burrowed in the little cabin, and slept like a woodchuck. The lonely watcher in the bow saw the captain’s sturdy figure standing at the wheel, turning the spokes from time to time, smoking his pipe with calm, regular puffs, studying sky and sea with patient inquiry. It grew cold, and the dew gathered thick, and dripped from rope and spar. Isla hardly felt the cold. She was breathing the sea air, her own air, once more, and the good boat was under her, and she was going home,—but going alone. She had been so shaken and torn with fear and pain these many months, her life and strength had gone so entirely into the part she was playing, the goal she must reach, that now there seemed nothing in life so good as this, to sit quiet, with no one to see her or speak to her, rising and falling with that slow, calm breathing of the waters, as her own sea-gulls loved to fall and rise. To-morrow, the awaking again to pain and loneliness, and the thought of what she had lost forever; tonight, rest; rest, with no thought nor feeling, only the sight of the quiet sea dimpling and lapping below, the quiet sky bending above. Rest!
She must have slept at last, for she was roused by cheerful voices, and came to herself with a start. The dawn was breaking pale and clear, the stars still shining; the east was tender with rose color; below the faint, sweet glow lay a band of green, cold and pure as chrysoprase; and against this green towered a great black rock.
“Half-past three!” said the captain, looking at his watch, as he climbed down into the boat which Elmer held ready against the side. “Longest chance I ever had, save and except one. Reckon we shall have to rout out the folks to get us some breakfast,—my good land! what’s that?”
The good boat was staunch, but that was a perilous moment, for both men started to their feet when Isla’s light figure dropped down, and sank with one motion into the bow.
“Who—who are ye?” asked the captain, in a stout voice which quavered strangely. “Are ye a livin’ woman? Say quick, before I heave ye out o’ here.”
“Oh, Captain Ezekiel, it is Isla! Isla Heron! Take me home, will you? Home to the island. I am never going away again.”
“And when we come to the beach,” said the captain, telling about it afterwards, “and I was just thinkin’ how I would get the poor child home to my house and get her warm, and then mebbe she’d feel like tellin’ me where she come from and all about it,—I was just thinkin’, when out she jumps like a flash, and says, ‘Thank you, captain!’ that pretty way she had, and she was gone, up and out over the rocks, quicker’n any bird I ever saw fly.”
Up and over the rocks! Oh, the good rocks, gray and black, with their clinging lichens of orange and russet! Oh, the friendly touch of them on her feet as she ran! The beach, with its white shell-sand disfigured by heads and entrails of fish, had no charm to stay the girl for an instant. The rocks drew her. Over them, away and away, round the point where the cliff nodded outward; there was home, and rest, and peace. The light broadened and brightened, the sea turned from gray to blue again, the grass shimmered in green and gold, for it was buttercup time. Isla stopped now and again to lay her hand on some well-known stone, to greet an old tree that had been her friend ever since she could remember. The ravens were still asleep, were they? Lazy old ravens; how she would startle them! But they would see that she came alone. She moaned, and ran on the faster.
Past the Dead Valley now. They were sleeping, too, the old mammoths,—they had never missed her, had never known how she dreamed of them, how she longed for them. The sea knew; it murmured and sang to her, telling her over and over again, how glad it was to see her home again. Now, only one more point to round, and she was home indeed. The strip of white sand where Jacob had slept that last time she ever left him till now, the roll of seaweed that marked the boundary line; then through the swampy bit, and up into the little green glade, where the cottage clung to the wall of the sheltering cliff behind it. Isla stood and looked where her home should be, and saw a heap of ashes, gray as the rock behind them, with charred beams scattered here and there.