CHAPTER X
TOWARD THE GREAT CATARACT
Pleasant and warm shone the sun that Monday morning, the 2d ofSeptember, warm through the greenery of oak and pine and fern-tree.Golden it lay upon the brakes and mosses by the river-bank; silverupon the sands.
Save for the chippering of the busy squirrels, a hush brooded overnature. The birds were silent. A far blue haze veiled the distantreaches of the stream. Over the world a vague, premonitory somethinghad fallen; it was summer still, but the first touch of dissolution,of decay, had laid the shadow of a pall upon it.
And the two lovers felt their hearts gladden at thought of the longmigration out into the unknown, the migration that might lead them tosouthern shores and to perpetual plenty, perhaps to the great boon ofcontact once again with humankind.
From room to room they went, making all tight and fast for the longabsence, taking farewell of all the treasures that during their longweeks of occupancy had accumulated there about them.
Though Stern was no sentimentalist, yet he, too, felt the tears wellin his eyes, even as Beta did, when they locked the door and slowlywent down the broad steps to the walk he had cleared to the river.
"Good-by," said the girl simply, and kissed her hand to the bungalow.Then he drew his arm about her and together they went on down thepath. Very sweet the thickets of bright blossoms were; very warm andsafe the little garden looked, cut out there from the forest thatstood guard about it on all sides.
They lingered one last moment by the sun-dial he had carved on a flatboulder, set in a little grassy lawn. The shadow of the gnomon fellathwart the IX and touched the inscription he had graved about theedge:
I MARK NO HOURS BUT BRIGHT ONES.
Beatrice pondered.
"We've never had any other kind, together--not one," said she, lookingup quickly at the man as though with a new sort of self-realization."Do you know that, dear? In all this time, never one hour, never onesingle moment of unhappiness or disagreement. Never a harsh word, anunkind look or thought. 'No hours but bright ones!' Why, Allan, that'sthe motto of our lives!"
"Yes, of our lives," he repeated gravely. "Our lives, forever, as longas we live. But come, come--time's slipping on. See, the shadow'smoving ahead already. Come, say good-by to everything, dear, untilnext spring. Now let's be off and away!"
They went aboard the yawl, which, fully laden, now lay at a littlestone wharf by the edge of the sweet wild wood, its mast overhung byarching branches of a Gothic elm.
Allan cast off the painter of braided leather, and with his boat-hookpushed away. He poled out into the current, then raised the sail ofwoven rushes like that of a Chinese junk.
The brisk north wind caught it, the sail crackled, filled and belliedhugely. He hauled it tight. A pleasant ripple began to murmur at thestern as the yawl gathered speed.
"Boston and way-stations!" cried he. But through his jest a certainsadness seemed to vibrate. As the wooded point swallowed up theirbungalow and blotted out all sight of their garden in the wilderness,then as the little wharf vanished, and nothing now remained butmemories, he, too, felt the solemnity of a leave-taking which mightwell be eternal.
Beatrice pressed a spray of golden-rod to her lips.
"From our garden," said she. "I'm going to keep it, wherever we go."
"I understand," he answered. "But this is no time, now, forretrospection. Everything's sunshine, life, hope--we've got a world towin!"
Then as the yawl heeled to the breeze and foamed away down stream witha speed and ease that bore witness to the correctness of her lines, hestruck up a song, and Beatrice joined in, and so their sadnessvanished and a great, strong, confident joy thrilled both of them atprospect of what was yet to be.
By mid-afternoon they had safely navigatedHarlem River and the upper reaches of East River, and were well uptoward Willett's Point, with Long Island Sound opening out before thembroadly.
Of the towns and villages, the estates and magnificent palaces thatonce had adorned the shores of the Sound, no trace remained. Nothingwas visible but unbroken lines of tall, blue forest in the distance;the Sound appeared to have grown far wider, and what seemed like astrong current set eastward in a manner certainly not produced by thetide, all of which puzzled Stern as he held the little yawl to hercourse, sole alone in that vast blue where once uncounted thousands ofkeels had vexed the brine.
Nightfall found them abreast the ruins of Stamford, still holding afair course about five or six miles off shore.
Save for the gulls and one or two quick-scurrying flights of MotherCarey's chickens (now larger and swifter than in the old days), and asingle "V" of noisy geese, no life had appeared all that afternoon.Stern wondered at this. A kind of desolation seemed to lie over theregion.
"Ten times more living things in our vicinity back home on theHudson," he remarked to Beatrice, who now lay 'midships, under theshelter of the cabin, warmly wrapped in furs against the keen cuttingof the night wind. "It seems as though something had happened aroundhere, doesn't it? I should have thought the Sound would be alive withbirds and fish. What can the matter be?"
She had no hypothesis, and though they talked it over, they reached noconclusion. By eight o'clock she fell asleep in her warm nest, andStern steered on alone, by the stars, under promise to put into harborwhere New Haven once had stood, and there himself get some much-neededsleep.
Swiftly the yawl split the waters of the Sound, for though her sailwas crude, her body was as fine and speedy as his long experience withboats could make it. Something of the vast mystery of night and seapenetrated his soul as he held the boat on her way.
The night was moonless; only the great untroubled stars wondered downat this daring venture into the unknown.
Stern hummed a tune to keep his spirits up. Running easily over themonotonous dark swells with a fair following breeze, he passed an houror two. He sat down, braced the tiller, and resigned himself tocontemplation of the mysteries that had been and that still must be.And very sweet to him was the sense of protection, of guardianship,wherein he held the sleeping girl, in the shelter of the little cabin.
He must have dozed, sitting there inactive and alone. How long? Hecould not tell. All that he knew was, suddenly, that he had wakened tofull consciousness, and that a sense of uneasiness, of fear, of peril,hung about him.
Up he started, with an exclamation which he suppressed just in time toavoid waking Beatrice. Through all, over all, a vast, dull roar wasmaking itself heard--a sound as though of mighty waters rushing,leaping, echoing to the sky that droned the echo back again.
Whence came it? Stern could not tell. From nowhere, from everywhere;the hum and vibrant blur of that tremendous sound seemed universal.
"My God, what's that?" Allan exclaimed, peering ahead with eyeswidened by a sudden stabbing fear. "I've got Beatrice aboard, here; Ican't let anything happen to her!"
The gibbous moon, red and sullen, was just beginning to thrust itsstrangely mottled face above the uneasy moving plain of waters. Faroff to southward a dim headland showed; even as Stern looked itdrifted backward and away.
Suddenly he got a terrifying sense of speed. The headland must havelain five miles to south of him; yet in a few moments, even as hewatched, it had gone into the vague obliteration of a vastly greaterdistance.
"What's happening?" thought Stern. The wind had died; it seemed asthough the waters were moving with the wind, as fast as the wind; theyawl was keeping pace with it, even as a floating balloon drifts in astorm, unfeeling it.
Deep, dull, booming, ominous, the roar continued. The sail flappedidle on the mast. Stern could distinguish a long line of foam thatslid away, past the boat, as only foam slides on a swift current.
He peered, in the gloom, to port; and all at once, far on the horizon,saw a thing that stopped his heart a moment, then thrashed it intofurious activity.
Off there in a direction he judged as almost due northeast, a tenuous,rising veil of vapor blotted out the lesser stars and dimmed thebrighte
r ones.
Even in that imperfect light he could see something of the sinuousdrift of that strange cloud.
Quickly he lashed the tiller, crept forward and climbed the mast, hisnight-glasses slung over his shoulder.
Holding by one hand, he tried to concentrate his vision through theglasses, but they failed to show him even as much as the naked eyecould discern.
The sight was paralyzing in its omen of destruction. Only too wellStern realized the meaning of the swift, strong current, the roar--nowever increasing, ever deepening in volume--the high and shifting vaporveil that climbed toward the dim zenith.
"Merciful Heaven!" gulped he. "There's a cataract over there--aterrible chasm--a plunge--to what? And we're drifting toward it atexpress-train speed!"
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