Foul Play - Dion Boucicault (the best books to read txt) 📗

he clutched the tree and got into the hut.

He found her directly. She was kneeling beneath the mat that a few minutes ago had been her roof. He extricated her in a moment, uttering inarticulate cries of pity and fear.

“Don’t be frightened,” said she. “I am not hurt.”

But he felt her quiver from head to foot. He wrapped her in all her rugs, and, thinking of nothing but her safety, lifted her in his strong arms to take her to his own place, which was safe from wind at least.

But this was no light work. To go there erect was impossible.

Holding tight by the tree, he got her to the lee of the tent and waited for a lull. He went rapidly down the hill, but, ere he reached the river, a gust came careering over the sea. A sturdy young tree was near him. He placed her against it, and wound his arms round her and its trunk. The blast came. The tree bent down almost to the ground, then whirled round, recovered, shivered; but he held firmly. It passed. Again he lifted her, and bore her to the boathouse. As he went, the wind almost choked her, and her long hair lashed his face like a whip. But he got her in, and then sat panting and crouching, but safe. They were none too soon; the tempest increased in violence, and became more continuous. No clouds, but a ghastly glare all over the sky. No rebellious waves, but a sea hissing and foaming under its master’s lash. The river ran roaring and foaming by, and made the boat heave even in its little creek. The wind, though it could no longer shake them, went screaming terribly close over their heads—no longer like air in motion, hut, solid and keen, it seemed the Almighty’s scythe mowing down Nature; and soon it became, like turbid water, blackened with the leaves, branches and fragments of all kinds it whirled along with it. The trees fell crashing on all sides, and the remains passed over their heads into the sea.

Helen behaved admirably. Speech was impossible, but she thanked him without it—eloquently; she nestled her little hand into Hazel’s, and, to Hazel, that night, with all its awful sights and sounds, was a blissful one. She had been in danger, but now was safe by his side. She had pressed his hand to thank him, and now she was cowering a little toward him in a way that claimed him as her protector. Her glorious hair blew over him and seemed to net him. And now and then, as they heard some crash nearer and more awful than another, she clutched him quickly though lightly; for, in danger, her sex love to feel a friend; it is not enough to see him near. And once, when a great dusky form of a sealion came crawling over the mound, and whimpering peeped into the boathouse, she even fled to his shoulder with both hands for a moment, and was there, light as a feather, till the creature had passed on. And his soul was full of peace, and a great tranquillity overcame it. He heard nothing of the wrack, knew nothing of the danger.

Oh, mighty Love! The tempest might blow, and fill the air and earth with ruin, so that it spared her. The wind was kind, and gentle the night, which brought that hair round his face, and that head so near his shoulder, and gave him the holy joy of protecting under his wing the soft creature he adored.

 

CHAPTER XXXIV.

 

ON the morning that followed this memorable night, our personages seemed to change characters. Hazel sat down before the relics of the hut—three or four strings dangling, and a piece of network waving—and eyed them with shame, regret and humiliation. He was so absorbed in his self-reproaches that he did not hear a light footstep, and Helen Rolleston stood near him a moment or two, and watched the play of his countenance with a very inquisitive and kindly light in her own eyes.

“Never mind,” said she, soothingly.

Hazel started at the music.

“Never mind your house being blown to atoms, and mine has stood?” said he, half reproachfully.

“You took too much pains with mine.”

“I will take a great deal more with the next.”

“I hope not. But I want you to come and look at the havoc. It is terrible; and yet so grand.” And thus she drew him away from the sight that caused his pain.

They entered the wood by a path Hazel had cut from the seashore, and viewed the devastation in Terrapin Wood. Prostrate trees lay across one another in astonishing numbers, and in the strangest positions; and their glorious plumes swept the earth. “Come,” said she, “it is a bad thing for the poor trees, but not for us. See, the place is strewed with treasures. Here is a tree full of fans all ready made. And what is that? A horse’s tail growing on a cocoa-tree! and a long one, too! that will make ropes for you, and thread for me. Ah, and here is a cabbage. Poor Mr. Welch! Well, for one thing, you need never saw nor climb any more. See the advantages of a hurricane.”

From the wood she took him to the shore, and there they found many birds lying dead; and Hazel picked up several that he had read of as good to eat. For certain signs had convinced him his fair and delicate companion was carnivorous, and must be nourished accordingly. Seeing him so employed, she asked him archly whether he was beginning to see the comforts of a hurricane. “Not yet,” said he; “the account is far from even.”

“Then come to where the rock was blown down.” She led the way gayly across the sands to a point where an overhanging crag had fallen, with two trees and a quantity of earth and plants that grew above it. But, when they got nearer, she became suddenly grave, and stood still. The mass had fallen upon a sheltered place, where seals were hiding from the wind, and had buried several; for two or three limbs were sticking out, of victims overwhelmed in the ruin; and a magnificent sealion lay clear of the smaller rubbish, but quite dead. The cause was not far to seek; a ton of hard rock had struck him, and then ploughed up the sand in a deep furrow, and now rested within a yard or two of the animal, whose back it had broken. Hazel went up to the creature and looked at it; then he came to Helen. She was standing aloof. “Poor bugbear,” said he. “Come away; it is an ugly sight for you.”

“Oh, yes,” said Helen. Then, as they returned, “Does not that reconcile you to the loss of a hut? We are not blown away nor crushed.”

“That is true,” said Hazel; “but suppose your health should suffer from the exposure to such fearful weather. So unlucky! so cruel! just as you were beginning to get stronger.”

“I am all the better for it. Shall I tell you? excitement is a good thing; not too often, of course; but now and then; and, when we are in the humor for it, it is meat and drink and medicine to us.”

“What! to a delicate young lady?”

“Ay, ‘to a delicate young lady.’ Last night has done me a world of good. It has shaken me out of myself. I am in better health and spirits. Of course I am very sorry the hut is blown down—because you took so much trouble to build it; but, on my own account, I really don’t care a straw. Find me some corner to nestle in at night, and all day I mean to be about, and busy as a bee, helping you, and— Breakfast! breakfast! Oh, how hungry I am.” And this spirited girl led the way to the boat with a briskness and a vigor that charmed and astonished him.

Souvent femme vane.

This gracious behavior did not blind Hazel to the serious character of the situation, and all breakfast-time he was thinking and thinking, and often kept a morsel in his mouth, and forgot to eat it for several seconds, he was so anxious and puzzled. At last he said, “I know a large hollow tree with apertures. If I were to close them all but one, and keep that for the door? No: trees have betrayed me; I’ll never trust another tree with you. Stay; I know, I know—a cavern.” He uttered the verb rather loudly, but the substantive with a sudden feebleness of intonation that was amusing. His timidity was superfluous; if he had said he knew “a bank whereon the wild thyme grows,” the suggestion would have been well received that morning.

“A cavern!” cried Helen. “It has always been the dream of my life to live in a cavern.”

Hazel brightened up. But the next moment he clouded again. “But I forgot. It will not do; there is a spring running right through it; it comes down nearly perpendicular through a channel it has bored, or enlarged; and splashes on the floor.”

“How convenient!” said Helen; “now I shall have a bath in my room, instead of having to go miles for it. By the by, now you have invented the shower-bath, please discover soap. Not that one really wants any in this island; for there is no dust, and the very air seems purifying. But who can shake off the prejudices of early education?”

Hazel said, “Now I’ll laugh as much as you like, when once this care is off my mind.”

He ran off to the cavern, and found it spacious and safe; but the spring was falling in great force, and the roof of the cave glistening with moisture. It looked a hopeless case. But if necessity is the mother of Invention, surely Love is the father. He mounted to the rock above, and found the spot where the spring suddenly descended into the earth with the loudest gurgle he had ever heard; a gurgle of defiance. Nothing was to be done there. But he traced it upward a little way, and found a place where it ran beside a deep decline. “Aha, my friend!” said he. He got his spade, and with some hours’ hard work dug it a fresh channel and carried it away entirely from its course. He returned to the cavern. Water was dripping very fast; but, on looking up, he could see the light of day twinkling at the top of the spiral water course he had robbed of its supply. Then he conceived a truly original idea. Why not turn his empty watercourse into a chimney, and so give to one element what he had taken from another? He had no time to execute this just then, for the tide was coming in, and he could not afford to lose any one of those dead animals. So he left the funnel to drip, that being a process he had no means of expediting, and moored the sealion to the very rock that had killed him, and was proceeding to dig out the seals, when a voice he never could hear without a thrill summoned him to dinner.

It was a plentiful repast, and included roast pintado and cabbage-palm. Helen Rolleston informed him during dinner that he would no longer be allowed to monopolize the labor attendant upon their condition.

“No,” said she, “you are always working for me, and I shall work for you. Cooking and washing are a woman’s work, not a man’s; and so are plaiting and netting.”

This healthy resolution once formed was adhered to with a constancy that belonged to the girl’s character. The roof of the ruined hut came