The girl nestled closer to his side. Looking down, he saw that she was weeping.
"God grant that we find a parson in that harbour," he added. She nodded, and choked with a sob she could not stifle.
"Why do you weep, dearest?" he asked.
"For those whom we must leave behind," she whispered.
He had no answer to make to that. Together they looked beyond the anchored ship and the bright river to the inscrutable wilderness that held the fate of the mad baronet so securely.
CHAPTER XXXII. THE FIRST STAGE OF THE HOMEWARD VOYAGE IS BRAVELY ACCOMPLISHED
At nine o'clock of the morning of the twenty-second day of June, the bow of the Heart of the West was towed around and pointed down-stream by willing boats and canoes; a light wind filled such sails as were set, and the voyage was begun. Trigget fired a salute from a new gun which Kingswell had given him from the armament of the ship. It was answered by the barking of cannon and the fluttering of sails.
Ouenwa stood with Mistress Westleigh, Kingswell, and Maggie Stone, aft by the tiller, which was in the hands of Tom Bent. The lad was fairly wild with excitement. Now, it seemed to him, his great dreams were assured; and yet a pang of homesickness went through the joy like the blade of a knife, as he watched the faces of the clustered people along the meadow and in the boats grow dim,—the faces of William Trigget and Black Feather, and of a dozen more who were dear to him. He shouted back to them in English and in his native tongue, and waved his cap frantically. The faces blurred and wavered. The ship swam around the wooded point, and meadow and stockade and camp of wigwams vanished like a picture withdrawn. The lad turned and glanced at Mistress Westleigh. Then he walked forward to the break of the poop, and blinked very hard at nothing in particular in the belly of the maintopsail.