“You don’t know?” cried the sailor. “None of your nonsense, sir! If any harm has come to him through you, I will hang you all to the branches of these trees. Come out here, and tell me where he has gone, if you don’t want to be dragged out.”
He tore open the canvas, as he spoke, and in the dim light saw a swift, dark pantomime acted inside. One shadowy figure was springing forward, with the flash of a blade in the uplifted hand, when another caught him round the neck, and a slim arm ran up his arm, that held the weapon. The knife flashed an instant in that silent struggle of the two to possess it, then Mrs. Nicola pushed her husband back, and, leaning forward, caught the canvas from the sailor’s hand.
“The young man took Philip Nicola’s canoe, and went down the bay in it,” she said angrily. “That is all we know about him.”
It was not likely, indeed, that they would do him any harm: whatever their feelings might be, they would not dare to. There was nothing to do but return to the boat, and row down the bay in search of Dick. The light was still radiantly clear, and the whole surface of the bay plain to be seen. The group of islands showed like ashen blotches on that mirror. The sailor pointed out to his captain a black speck that floated away from among these islands.
“It is a boat, sir,” he said; “but there is no one in it.”
“Make for that nearest island,” the captain ordered; and muttered to himself, “Dick wouldn’t do it! he wouldn’t.”
No, Dick would not, in any depth of misery, have thrown his life away. They found him there, lying prone in the sand, where, years before, he had buried his father. What attraction had drawn him to that spot would be hard to tell. Possibly, now that he knew the meaning of failure, there was some blind feeling of compunction toward one whose failures he had reproachfully thought of.
Dick made no resistance when Captain Cary lifted him, and, after a moment, walked to the boat with him. He sat there, with his head bowed forward, while they rowed back to the ship. He was like one who is but half-aroused from sleep, and has a mind to fall back into it. He submitted to all that was required of him, took what they gave him, did what they bade him. It was not much they prescribed—only dry clothes and a bed.
There is a power of instinctive recoil by which some natures are saved from being destroyed by the shock of a great blow. The senses shut their inner doors at the jar of the enemy’s approach, and the soul, in some remote privacy of its being, arms itself before coming forth to see who knocks at its portal and bids it to battle. But for this merciful interposition, it would have fared hard with Dick Rowan, when, struck by the lightning of a glance, the framework on which all his life had been built up gave way without a moment’s warning.
His friend left him after awhile, and went up to the Cleavelands. Hester had expected Dick, but was too much occupied with her husband to be very curious regarding the accident. The young man had been knocked over by the boom, she had been told, and the result was nothing worse than a wetting. A wetting was bad, to be sure; she was so sorry;