“The good God builds the blind bird’s nest.�
“If there be such a God,� Skelton said to himself, “I adore Him.� The next moment he felt himself struggling in the water, with blackness around him and above him, and the wind roaring, and a weight of water like a million tons fell upon him, and he knew no more.
Within an hour the tempest had gone down and the clouds were drifting wildly across the pale sky. Occasionally the moon shone fitfully. The banks of the river were patrolled by frightened and excited crowds of negroes, with Bulstrode and Blair and Mr. Conyers and one or two other white persons among them, all engaged in the terrible search for Skelton and Lewis. The wind had suddenly changed to exactly the opposite direction, and the tide was running in with inconceivable rapidity. The black mud of the river bottom near the shore, that had been drained of water, was now quickly covered. Lights were moving along the shore, boats were being rowed about the river, and cries resounded, those asking for information that the others could not give. Sylvia Shapleigh had spent most of the time on the wharf where Skelton had left her. The servants had got around her, begging her to go to the house, out of the storm. Like a person in a dream, she went and changed her dress, and watched with dazed eyes the fury of sky and air and water. She could not wait for the watchers on the shore to tell her what was going on upon the river, and went back obstinately to the wharf, in spite of the prayers and entreaties of the servants. She tried to persuade herself that she was watching for Skelton’s return, but in her inmost heart she felt she would never see him alive again.
It was about nine o’clock when she heard a shout some distance down the river, and a boat pulled up, through the ghostly light, towards Deerchase. Sylvia started in feverish haste towards the bridge. She ran in her eagerness. As she reached the farther end, just at the Deerchase lawn, she met Conyers coming towards her.
“It is Lewis—Lewis is alive!� he said. “He is exhausted,
but will recover.�—Page [322]
“It is Lewis—Lewis is alive!� he said. “He tied the tiller rope around him—that was what saved him. He is exhausted, but he will recover. The boat was found drifting about just below Lone Point.�
Sylvia tried to ask, “Has anything been heard of Mr. Skelton?� but she could not. Conyers understood the dumb question in her eyes, and shook his head. Poor, poor Sylvia!
Sylvia, scarcely knowing what she did, walked by Conyers’s side across the Deerchase lawn. They met a crowd—Blair carrying Lewis in his arms, and Bulstrode trudging along weeping, and the negroes following. Lewis’s face was purplish, and he seemed scarcely to breathe; but when Bob Skinny came running out of the house with a bottle of brandy, and they poured some down his throat, he opened his eyes and managed to gasp, “Where is Mr. Skelton?�
Nobody answered him. Lewis gulped down more brandy, and cried out in a weak, distressed voice: