"Somethin' hefty," he continued, and I noticed he had dropped the rest of his treasures now and clung to that. "Somethin' hefty—and valu'ble!"
"But it's mine, I tell you!"
"'Tain't neither! 'Tain't neither!"
He was walking faster all the while to shake me off, and I to keep with him; our angry voices rose higher in the gale.
I can't help smiling now when I think of the innocent pair of us that night, puffing along the sand in the blind, wet wind, squabbling like two children over that priceless unseen casket, come up from the waters of the sea.
"It's mine!" I bawled, "and you give it to me!" And I grabbed at his arm again. But this time, letting out a squeal, he shook me off and fled inshore, up the face of the dune, and I not far behind him.
And so, pursued and pursuing, we came suddenly over a spur of the dunes and saw below us on the southward beach the drift-fire the life-savers had made. There were many small figures in the glow, a surf-boat hauled up, I think, and a pearly huddle of alien men.
But on none of this could I take my oath; my thoughts had been jerked back too abruptly to all the other, forgotten drama of that night, the music and the faces in Center Church, the flowers, the bridegroom, and the bride.
For there on the crest before me, given in silhouette against the fire-glow, stood the bride.
How she came there, by what violence or wild stratagem she had got away, what blind path had brought her, a fugitive, across the island—it was all beyond me. But no matter; there she stood before me on the dune at Pilot's Point, as still as a lost statue, tulle and satin, molded by the gale, sheathing her form in low relief like shining marble, her stone-quiet hands at rest on her unstirring bosom, her face set toward the invisible sea.... It was queer to see her like that: dim, you know; just shadowed out in mystery by the light that came a long way through the streaming darkness and died as it touched her.