"She has cut her foot, friend Rackby," said Peter. "I took the liberty to bring her here—so."
Wrath seized the little man. "Thank you for nothing, Peter Loud!" he cried, and these again were the very words Cad Sills had hurled at him when he had saved her life at Pull-an'-be-Damned.
"That's as you say," said Deep-water Peter.
"You have done your worst now," said Jethro. "If I find you here again I will shoot you down like a dog."
Peter laughed very bitterly. "You have got what is yours, Harbor Master," he said, "and it takes two to make a quarrel."
But as he was going through the door he looked back. The girl unclosed her eyes, and a light played out of them that followed him into the dark and streamed across the heavens like the meteorite that had once fallen on Meteor Island.
Peter had taken a wreath of fire to his heart. The girl attended him like something in the corner of his eye. Times past count, he plied his oars among the cross currents to the westward of that island, hoping to catch a glimpse of his siren on the crags.
Sometimes for long moments he lay on his oars, hearing the blue tide with a ceaseless motion heave and swirl and gutter all round its rocky border, and the serpents' hiss come from some Medusa's head of trailing weed uttered in venomous warning. Under flying moons the shaggy hemlock grove was like a bearskin thrown over the white and leprous nakedness of stony flanks. At the approach of storm the shadows stealing forth from that sullen, bowbacked ridge were blue-filmed, like the languid veil which may be seen to hang before blue, tear-dimmed eyes.
Deep-water Peter felt from the first that he could not dwell for long on the mysteries of that island without meeting little Rackby's mad challenge. Insensibly he drew near—and at last set foot on its shores again. Late on a clear afternoon he landed in the very lee of the island, at a point where the stone rampart was fifty feet in height, white as a bone, and pitted like a mass of grout. This cliff was split from top to bottom, perhaps by frosts, perhaps by the fall of the buried meteor. A little cove lay at the base of this crevasse, and here a bed of whitest sand had sifted in, rimmed by a great heap of well-sanded, bright-blue shells of every size and shape. This was the storehouse from which Day Rackby drew her speaking shells.
He looped the painter of his dory under a stone and ascended the rock. His heart was in his throat. All the world hitherto had not proffered him such choice adventure, if he had read the signs aright. As if directed by the intuition of his heart, he slipped into the shadows of the grove. Fragrance was broadcast there, the clean fragrance of nature at her most alone. Crows whirred overhead; their hoarse plaint, with its hint of desolation, made a kind of emptiness in the wood, and he went on, step by step, as in a dream, wrapt, expectant. Was she here? Could Rackby's will detain her here, a presence so swift, mischievous, and aerial? Such a spirit could not be held in the hollow of a man's hand. He remembered how in his youth a man had tried to keep wild foxes on this same island, for breeding purposes, but they had whisked their brushes in his face and swum ashore.