By him who sent the tangled ram
To spare the child of Abraham!”
At that she rubbed the liniment over her swollen ankle vigorously, bound it tightly, then crept beneath the blankets once more.
Though the bandage relieved her somewhat, she was still conscious of pain. Our waking thoughts as well as our dreams are often inspired by physical sensations. Pain awakens within us a longing for some spot where we have known perfect peace. To Florence, at the moment, this meant the deck of the unfortunate Pilgrim. There, with the waves lapping the old ship’s sides, the gentle breezes whispering and the gulls soaring high, she had found peace.
As she allowed her mind to drift back to those blissful days, she was tempted to wish that she and the slender, dark-eyed Greta at her side had never set foot on Greenstone Ridge.
“And yet—” she whispered. The words of some great prophet came to her. “‘There is a destiny that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we may.’”
“It was written in the stars that we should be here,” she told herself. “And, being here, we shall do what we can for those who are nearest us.
“But, God willing, we shall go back. And then?”
She thought of the narrow camping grounds on the shores of Duncan’s Bay. “There is treasure hidden there,” she told herself. “How can it be otherwise? It is the only bit of level land on that side of Blake’s Point. Countless generations of men have camped there. We will go back there and dig deep.
“And when I am weary of digging—” she laughed a low laugh. “I’ll go back and get that monster of a pike. I’ll go all by myself. And will I land him? Just you wait!”