"Why, you said you wanted to get back afore morning, and I reckon we can start now. The sea runs pretty high, yet, but I guess there ain't no danger."
Like a man in a dream, Courtney passed his hand across his brow, as though to clear away a cloud. Again, self-preservation, "the first law of nature," rose before him overcoming every other feeling. His eyes wandered mechanically to the fatal spot, and he turned away with a shudder.
"Can we reach N—— before morning breaks?" he asked.
"I reckon so?" was the answer, "if we start now."
"Do you think there is any danger?"
"Don't think there is. You'll be apt to be sea-sick, though," said the boy; "waves run pooty high. But what makes you speak so hoarse, and look so scared, as if you'd seed a ghost? P'r'aps you did, too; they say there's one up in that old house, there."
"Let us go!" said Courtney, unheeding his words, as he folded his cloak closer around him, and started in the direction of the boat.
The boy shuffled after him, to where the boat now lay, high and dry on the strand, requiring the united efforts of both, to launch her into the water.
"Precious hard time I had of it, all night in the storm," said the lad, as he took the oars; "got soaked right through; and, by golly! if there wasn't some thunder! I never wants to be out such a night again."
The boat was pitching and tossing wildly on the heaving waves, threatening each moment to capsize; but Courtney, lost to all sense of personal danger, sat striving to dispel the cloud of horror and remorse from his mind, and answer the momentous question: "What is to be done next?" His wife would assuredly be missed. How was her sudden disappearance to be accounted for? It seemed probable that none but Captain Campbell knew of her intended visit to the isle, save the boy who had brought her over; and, in waiting on the dark, dangerous beach, in such a wild tempest, with the advancing tide rising on the shore, what would be more natural than that she had been accidentally overtaken, and swept away by the rapid rising of the waves?