"Self-willed—self-willed!" said the good old lady, sorrowfully, as she kissed her. "Well, good-by, my love. Remember, I half expect you back to-morrow."
"And I shall certainly try not to disappoint you," said Sibyl, as she quitted the room.
She took her way to the beach, where she was soon joined by Carl, who, muttering an inarticulate something about having a "stunner of a storm pretty soon," pushed off and took the oars, and under his practiced hands the boat was soon flying like a bird through the sparkling waves.
CHAPTER XX.
WHAT CAME NEXT.
"And on the midnight air arose
That awful dying cry,
That echoed through the lonely house
Vibrating to the sky."
The sky was rapidly darkening. The wind came wailing with a low, menacing sound over the waters. The sun sank red, fiery, and threatening in the far west, and the scared water-fowl went skimming over the troubled face of the bay, sending full, wild shrieks, as if to herald the coming storm. The darkened sea heaved and tossed, as if struggling with an inward foe, and the little boat quivered in every joint as it flew over the glassy waves.
Sibyl's eyes kindled as they surveyed the grand but terrible beauty of the scene. On the east, as far as the eye could see, spread out the boundless, tempestuous ocean; on the west stretched a long line of coast, forming a sort of semi-circle, lost on one side in the dense primeval forest, that as yet the woodman's axe had not desecrated, and on the other jutting out in a wild, rocky promontory. On the south was the island, which they were now approaching, looking a mere dark speck in the vast and mighty deep.
"If we don't have a screamer of a storm to-night you may say I don't know nuthing 'bout the weather," said Carl, pausing for a moment to wipe the perspiration off his heated brow, and glance at the darkening face of the sky. "Such a one as we ain't had since the night me and Mr. Drummond and Lem saved the man and woman what was washed ashore from the wreck."
"That was an awful night," said Sibyl, still keeping her kindling eyes fixed on the gloomy grandeur of the sea and sky, "but how splendid, how magnificent, how glorious this prospect is. Oh, I love a storm. I love the grand jubilee of the earth, when sea, and wind, and lightning, and storm, all join in the glorious hymn of the tempest. Oh, the nights that I have spent on sea when nothing was to be seen but the black pall of the heavens above, rent every instant by the forked lightning, while the crash of the thunder, and the roar of the wind and waves mingled together in the sublime refrain, and our ship went driving on, as if mad. Oh, for those nights again! when my very soul was inspired by the unspeakable glory of the scene."