For me there was no novelty in the craft, but it was a monstrous toy for my companion, who flitted from stem to stern, picking up her dainty skirts as she explored the bow, or wrinkling her delicate nose as she met the odor of the cabin she insisted on entering.
“Does Maxwell cook on that thing?” asked the girl, pointing to the small stove red with old rust, “and sleep in one of those dirty boxes?”
“Undoubtedly. That is a sailor’s lot.”
“Horrors! I wouldn’t be a sailor for the world! Let’s get into the air—I’m stifled!”
An hour passed quickly enough and without the return of Maxwell. The lunch was spread and eaten in the strip of shade, which took another hour. A slight restraint followed the smoking of my cigar, for our conversation was becoming as circumscribed as our freedom, probably due to the fact that we both began to realize we were prisoners. At best there is no exhilaration of spirits to be found on the hot deck of a dilapidated fishing-sloop at anchor, and I dreaded the dulness which would ensue if our confinement became protracted beyond a certain point.
But we were not destined to be beset by stupidity through lack of events. Two hours, three hours passed and yet no Maxwell. The conversation waned like a slowly dying blaze. I was becoming desperate and Miss Edith was beginning to question me with her eyes, when I saw matters were to be made worse by a thunderstorm which showed its black head over the woods to the southwest. Was Maxwell crazy? What could he be thinking of to leave us in this predicament? Again and again I searched the opening into the woods through which the horse and wagon had disappeared, but the shore remained as wild and deserted as when Columbus discovered America. The little boat lay temptingly on the sand five hundred feet away, but it might as well have been as many miles, for my broken arm made swimming impossible.
From being slightly compromising our situation had become fully so—and more; it was irksome, awkward and not at all heroic. It was evident from her manner that the girl was becoming fully alive to her position.
Rapidly the clouds approached the zenith. They were terribly sinister, and, though there appeared to be no more danger to us than the remote chance of being struck by lightning, I dreaded for Miss Edith the closer imprisonment in the unwholesome cabin and a probable drenching in the end.
Even should Maxwell now arrive it would be impossible to return to the hotel before the storm broke, and as the sun became suddenly quenched by the sulphur-colored mass that had risen to it, and a sickly green shade settled over us, I turned my attention to cheering my companion, who, awed by the tragic light that overspread us, seemed lost in fearful contemplation of the approaching tempest, and sat silent in the cockpit with both hands tightly clutching the tiller. The tide was full flood and not a wrinkle marred the polished surface of the Sound. In the distance were some motionless vessels taking in their lighter sails and over all nature there brooded a portentous quiet.
It was evident that we were about to experience something out of the common, for though the edge of the squall had no more than the usual threat of a summer shower, the clouds behind it sent through me a thrill of awe mingled with fear. As I stood with my hands on the shrouds watching a space of inky blackness it opened and from it descended a bulb of vapor shaped like a bowl, its edges hidden in the clouds above. It was a mass lighter than the rest, and it elongated until its form changed to a funnel-shaped pipe which gradually neared the surface of the earth, trailing as it moved along. Its approach was accompanied with a roar as of a distant cataract, and as I saw the sinuous tube lose itself in a mist of dust, flying branches and heavier debris and appear to be coming toward us, a fearful knowledge of what we were about to encounter burst upon my mind and I turned quickly to the girl, who in her fright had risen to her feet.