Foul Play by Dion Boucicault (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

such simple religious exercises as he could invent. The rain still continued, with less violence indeed, but without an hour’s intermission. After breakfast he read to her the exodus of the Israelites, and their sufferings during that desert life. He compared those hardships with their own troubles, and pointed out to her how their condition presented many things to be thankful for. The island was fruitful, the climate healthy. They might have been cast away on a sandy key or reef, where they would have perished slowly and miserably of hunger and exposure. Then they were spared to each other. Had she been alone there, she could not have provided for herself; had he been cast away a solitary man, the island would have been to him an intolerable prison.

In all these reflections Hazel was very guarded that no expression should escape him to arouse her apprehension. He was so careful of this that she observed his caution and watched his restraint. And Helen was thinking more of this than of the holy subject on which he was discoursing. The disguise he threw over his heart was penetrable to the girl’s eye. She saw his love in every careful word, and employed herself in detecting it under his rigid manner. Secure in her own position, she could examine his from the loop-holes of her soul, and take a pleasure in witnessing the suppressed happiness she could bestow with a word. She did not wonder at her power. The best of women have the natural vanity to take for granted the sway they assume over the existence which submits to them.

A week passed thus, and Hazel blessed the rain that drove them to this sociability. He had prepared the bladder of a young seal which had drifted ashore dead. This membrane, dried in the sun, formed a piece of excellent parchment, and he desired to draw upon it a map of the island. To accomplish this, the first thing was to obtain a good red ink from the cochineal, which is crimson. He did according to his means. He got one of the tin vessels and filed it till he had obtained a considerable quantity of the metal. This he subjected for forty hours to the action of lime-juice. He then added the cochineal, and mixed till he obtained a fine scarlet. In using it he added a small quantity of a hard and pure gum—he had found gum abounded in the island. His pen was made from an osprey’s feather, hundreds of which were strewn about the cliffs, and some of these he had already secured and dried.

Placing his tin baler before him, on which he had scratched his notes, he drew a map of the island.

“What shall we call it?” said he.

Helen paused, and then replied, “Call it ‘GODSEND’ Island.”

“So I will,” he said, and wrote it down.

Then they named the places they had seen. The reef Helen had discovered off the northwest coast they called “White Water Island,” because of the breakers. Then came “Seal Bay,” “Palmtree Point,” “Mount Lookout” (this was the hill due south of where they lived). They called the cane-brake “Wild Duck Swamp,” and the spot where they lunched “Cochineal Clearing.” The mountain was named “Mount Cavity.”

“But what shall we call the capital of the kingdom—this hut?” said Miss Rolleston, as she leaned over him and pointed to the spot.

“Saint Helen’s,” said Hazel, looking up; and he wrote it down ere she could object.

Then there was a little awkward pause, while he was busily occupied in filling up some topographical details. She turned it off gayly.

“What are those caterpillars that you have drawn there, sprawling over my kingdom?” she asked.

“Caterpillars! you are complimentary, Miss Rolleston. Those are mountains.”

“Oh, indeed; and those lines you are now drawing are rivers, I presume.”

“Yes; let us call this branch of our solitary estuary, which runs westward, the river Lea, and this, to the east, the river Medway. Is such your majesty’s pleasure?”

“La Reine le veut,” replied Helen, smiling. “But, Master Geographer, it seems to me that you are putting in mountains and rivers which you have never explored. How do you know that these turns and twists in the stream exist as you represent them? and those spurs, which look so real, have you not added them only to disguise the caterpillar character of your range of hills!”

Hazel laughed as he confessed to drawing on his fancy for some little details. But pleaded that all geographers, when they drew maps, were licensed to fill in a few such touches, where discovery had failed to supply particulars.

Helen had always believed religiously in maps, and was amused when she reflected on her former credulity.

 

CHAPTER XXXIII.

 

HELEN’S strength was coming back to her but slowly; she complained of great lassitude and want of appetite. But, the following day having cleared up, the sun shone out with great power and brilliancy. She gladly welcomed the return of the fine weather, but Hazel shook his head; ten days’ rain was not their portion—the bad weather would return, and complete the month or six weeks’ winter to which Nature was entitled. The next evening the appearance of the sky confirmed his opinion. The sun set like a crimson shield; gory, and double its usual size. It entered into a thick bank of dark violet cloud that lay on the horizon, and seemed to split the vapor into rays, but of a dusky kind; immediately above this crimson the clouds were of a brilliant gold, but higher they were the color of rubies, and went gradually off to gray.

But as the orb dipped to the horizon a solid pile of unearthly clouds came up from the southeast; their bodies were singularly and unnaturally black, and mottled with copper-color, and hemmed with a fiery yellow. And these infernal clouds towered up their heads, pressing forward as if they all strove for precedency; it was like Milton’s fiends attacking the sky. The rate at which they climbed was wonderful. The sun set and the moon rose full, and showed those angry masses surging upward and jostling each other as they flew.

Yet below it was dead calm.

Having admired the sublimity of the scene, and seen the full moon rise, but speedily lose her light in a brassy halo, they entered the hut, which was now the headquarters, and they supped together there.

While they were eating their little meal the tops of the trees were heard to sigh, so still was everything else. None the less did those strange clouds fly northward, eighty miles an hour. After supper, Helen sat busy over the fire, where some gum, collected by Hazel, resembling India-rubber, was boiling; she was preparing to cover a pair of poor Welch’s shoes, inside and out, with a coat of this material, which Hazel believed to be water-proof. She sat in such a position that he could watch her. It was a happy evening. She seemed content. She had got over her fear of him; they were good comrades if they were nothing more. It was happiness to him to be by her side even on those terms. He thought of it all as he looked at her. How distant she had seemed once to him; what an unapproachable goddess. Yet there she was by his side in a hut he had made for her.

He could not help sipping the soft intoxicating draught her mere presence offered him. But by and by he felt his heart was dissolving within him, and he was trifling with danger. He must not look on her too long, seated by the fire like a wife. The much-enduring man rose, and turned his back upon the sight he loved so dearly. He went out at the open door intending to close it and bid her good-night. But he did not do so, just then; for his attention as an observer of nature was arrested by the unusual conduct of certain animals. Gannets and other sea-birds were running about the opposite wood and craning their necks in a strange way. He had never seen one enter that wood before.

Seals and sealions were surrounding the slope, and crawling about, and now and then plunging into the river, which they crossed with infinite difficulty, for it was running very high and strong. The trees also sighed louder than ever. Hazel turned back to tell Miss Rolleston something extraordinary was going on. She sat in sight from the river, and, as he came toward the hut, he saw her sitting by the fire reading.

He stopped short. Her work lay at her feet. She had taken out a letter, and she was reading it by the fire.

As she read it her face was a puzzle. But Hazel saw the act alone; and a dart of ice seemed to go through and through him.

This, then, was her true source of consolation. He thought it was so before. He had even reason to think so. But, never seeing any palpable proofs, he had almost been happy. He turned sick with jealous misery, and stood there rooted and frozen.

Then came a fierce impulse to shut the sight out that caused this pain.

He almost flung her portoullis to, and made his hands bleed. But a bleeding heart does not feel scratches.

“Good-night,” said he hoarsely.

“Good-night,” said she kindly.

And why should she not read his letter? She was his affianced bride, bound to him by honor as well as inclination. This was the reflection to which, after a sore battle with his loving heart, the much-enduring man had to come at last; and he had come to it, and was getting back his peace of mind, though not his late complacency, and about to seek repose in sleep, when suddenly a clap of wind came down like thunder, and thrashed the island and everything in it.

Everything animate and inanimate seemed to cry out as the blow passed.

Another soon followed, and another—intermittent gusts at present, but of such severity that not one came without making its mark.

Birds were driven away like paper; the sealions whimpered, and crouched into corners, and huddled together, and held each other, whining.

Hazel saw but one thing; the frail edifice he had built for the creature he adored. He looked out of his boat, and fixed his horror-stricken eyes on it; he saw it waving to and fro, yet still firm. But he could not stay there. If not in danger she must be terrified. He must go and support her. He left his shelter, and ran toward her hut. With a whoop and a scream another blast tore through the wood, and caught him. He fell, dug his hands into the soil, and clutched the earth. While he was in that position, he heard a sharp crack; he looked up in dismay, and saw that one of Helen’s trees had broken like a carrot, and the head was on the ground leaping about; while a succession of horrible sounds of crashing, and rending, and tearing showed the frail hut was giving way on every side; racked and riven, and torn to pieces. Hazel, though a stout man, uttered cries of terror death would never have drawn from him; and, with a desperate headlong rush, he got to the place where the bower had been; but now it was a prostrate skeleton, with the mat roof flapping like a loose sail above it, and Helen below.

As he reached the hut, the wind got hold of the last of the four shrubs that did duty for a door, and tore it from the cord that held it, and whirled it into the air; it went past Hazel’s face like a bird flying.

Though staggered himself by the same blow of wind,