“All right,” returned Belcher, with a laugh. “Great night though to go on business, ’Dad. Row, men.”
The oars at once fell with a roll in the rullocks, as the Captain would have phrased it, and the police boat shot away.
Nothing was said in the Polly Ann, and she moved on with a steady motion, the drawing wind pulling her bulging sail. The Captain had lit his short pipe, and had turned with his face to the west, watching for the breeze. Harrington sat in silence solemnly brooding on the strange scene around him. Overhead a rack of solid darkness; underneath the inky swells of the wide sea, like a sea of weltering shadow, which broke as the boat clove its silent way into a flow of soft gloomy phosphorescent fire from her prow and in her wake; before him the uncouth crouching figure of the Captain, with the red glow of his pipe momently lighting his cheek in little flashes, and giving his face the grim, leathern look of some weird Charon piloting them over the sullen lake of Death; and beyond in the far distance, below the sombre canopy, that shape of clear sky, smaller now, with the silver level of the sea beneath it, calm and lustrous as the ocean of Eternity. A sense of sombre sweetness melted into the young man’s heart, as he gazed over the solemn and awful flood of shadow to that melancholy glory far away. He thought of that last hour with her; of their proud and exulting parting; he thought of her standing now, graceful and radiant as a Greek goddess, and noble in her widowhood, dreaming of him with the mellow light of the holy room around her, while he drifted on over the sullen water toward that bright line of jasper, like one drifting from eternal Night to the ocean of eternal Day.
A moment, and the heavy canopy closed down over the clear horizon, and all was impenetrable darkness. The wind freshened with a long, mysterious sigh, the sails swelled and strained, and the boat began to rush with the water gurgling and brattling around her bows, and flowing swiftly past her sides and from her stern in a brighter gloom of phosphorescent fire. Except that strange senescent light, and the red glow of the revolving beacon far down the harbor, which every little while glared in the darkness like a sombre eye, there was no glimmer on all the black expanse under the vast and hollow vault of sooty cloud.
Suddenly, while the broad blue shuttle of the lightning shook over the wild and livid sea, the solid darkness of the rack split with a crash in a long, bright jagged crack of fire, and closed again with a tremendous trampling roar. At once through the blackness, the headlong torrent dropped hissing and seething on the water, the heavy wind streamed staggering down, shook the craft, stopped and reeled, rose howling in a mighty forward gale, and amidst the cataract rushing of the rain, the heeling boat tore like a fury through the level sea with the spray flying over her bows, and the wash rippling in at her gunnel. On she fled, leaning down with her bulging sails strained as though they would burst from the bolt-ropes, the water swishing swiftly past her side and rushing from her stern in phosphorescent gloom, the rain plashing in clattering riot on her planks and canvas, and the whole inky flood beaten into myriad-millioned jets of springing flame around her. Again shook the broad blue shuttle of the lightning, illuminating the darkness for an instant with a ghastly bloom, and showing the wild shapes of the clouds, and again through the following blackness burst the roar of the tumbling thunder, dying away in the sweeping rush of the headlong wind, and the voluminous plash and clatter of the falling torrent. Not a word was spoken on board the flying boat. The Captain sat grimly holding the tail of the mainsheet, ready to let fly at a moment’s warning; and Wentworth, with a tin-pail in his hands, baled out the water as fast as it came in, while Harrington, bare-headed, for he had taken off his felt-hat to wrap around his pistol that it might be kept dry, and tucked both into his bosom, sat grasping the tiller, drenched, like every one on board, save the mackintoshed Captain and Bagasse, to the skin, his soul throbbing with stern glory in the splendid terrors of the storm. So, amidst wind and rain and darkness, and the incessant bursts of lightnings, rosy-purple now, and the tumbling roll of thunder, the boat held her flying course through seething flood and showering spray.
At the headlong velocity with which she flew, with the wind right abaft and a level sea beneath her hull, it could not take her long to reach the port to which the hand of Harrington steered her. It was perhaps hardly half an hour before, in a sheeting flood of rose and purple lightning, he saw the large, humpy mass of the island loom up from the sea before him. The darkness fell, followed by the thunder, and the boat sped on. Soon came another sheet of lightning, and this time, much nearer the island now, he saw the house upon it, and caught a glimpse of two boats lying at the wharf on the southern side of the shore. The rain had begun to slacken, and the wind to abate its violence. He waited a moment till the thunder had rolled away, and then called the Captain to him.
“Captain,” said he, “settle away the sails, call Bagasse, and out with the oars. I am going to run the boat to the northwestern side of the island, out of sight of the fellow we’re after.”
The captain sprang away, cast off the main-sheet, while Wentworth seized the jib, and amidst the clank and rattle of hoops and halyards, the sails were settled and clewed, and the boat swung masterless upon the brine. Bagasse came creeping out of the cuddy at the call of Wentworth, and Harrington securing the tiller rose and came forward.
“Hah!” said the Frenchman, hoarsely, “I haf my jacket dry! Br-r-r! It is ze night of ze old devail wis his tonnerre and light and rain watair.” And with a shrug, he looked out on the black expanse around him, and held out his hand to see how much rain was falling.
“The rain is nearly over,” said Harrington, observing his motion, as he stooped to take up an oar. “Can you row, Bagasse?”