It filled the Swan's white wings as it rose and freshened, and just as the sun rose, she sailed out of the bay, her master, silent and pallid, standing on the deck, watching the dim roof which covered his perished hopes.
There lay the Lower House, snug in the valley. He sent an unspoken farewell to the good Henry, and to the happy husband and wife who were probably just awaking to a fresh day of love and hope and mutual help.
The warm sun-rays gilded Percivale's bright head, and glorified the still features as he stood. Old Müller looked anxiously at him. Something was wrong, he guessed, and yet—oh, the joy to be putting to sea again as in old days, free and untrammelled by the fashionable wife or the sick maid!
The old man's spirit leaped up with the red sun. His blood rose, his eye kindled.
The bonnie yacht bounded over the freshening waves, the day laughed broadly over the sea, and the crew, animated by Müller's delight, sang their Volkslieder as they went about their work.
That night, the last sultry heat of autumn burst in a storm more violent than Edge Combe had known for half a century. The first of the equinoctial gales raged from the south west, thundering against the battlemented crags of Cornwall, shrieking up the Devonshire valleys.
More than one large ship went to pieces on the wild coast; and fragments of wrecks were washed ashore at Brent and in Edge Bay.
But no trace of the Swan or of any of those on board of her was ever carried by the relentless ocean within reach of the hearts that ached and longed for tidings of her fate. She had vanished as she had first appeared, mysteriously, in a tempest.
To the fisher-folk there seemed to be something supernatural alike in her arrival and her disappearance.
For months they cherished among themselves the belief that she would return one day—that somewhere, in some distant port, or in far sunny seas she was gliding like a big white bird along her mysterious course.