Drift from Two Shores | Page 9

up his physical health. Never a lover of rude freedom or
outdoor life his sedentary predilections and nice tastes kept him from
lapsing into barbarian excess; never a sportsman he followed the chase
with no feverish exaltation. Even dumb creatures found out his secret,
and at times, stalking moodily over the upland, the brown deer and elk
would cross his path without fear or molestation, or, idly lounging in
his canoe within the river bar, flocks of wild fowl would settle within
stroke of his listless oar. And so the second winter of his hermitage
drew near its close, and with it came a storm that passed into local
history, and is still remembered. It uprooted giant trees along the river,
and with them the tiny rootlets of the life he was idly fostering.
The morning had been fitfully turbulent, the wind veering several
points south and west, with suspicions lulls, unlike the steady onset of

the regular southwest trades. High overhead the long manes of racing
cirro stratus streamed with flying gulls and hurrying water-fowl; plover
piped incessantly, and a flock of timorous sand-pipers sought the low
ridge of his cabin, while a wrecking crew of curlew hastily manned the
uprooted tree that tossed wearily beyond the bar. By noon the flying
clouds huddled together in masses, and then were suddenly exploded in
one vast opaque sheet over the heavens. The sea became gray, and
suddenly wrinkled and old. There was a dumb, half-articulate cry in the
air,--rather a confusion of many sounds, as of the booming of distant
guns, the clangor of a bell, the trampling of many waves, the creaking
of timbers and soughing of leaves, that sank and fell ere you could yet
distinguish them. And then it came on to blow. For two hours it blew
strongly. At the time the sun should have set the wind had increased; in
fifteen minutes darkness shut down, even the white sands lost their
outlines, and sea and shore and sky lay in the grip of a relentless and
aggressive power.
Within his cabin, by the leaping light of his gusty fire, North sat alone.
His first curiosity passed, the turmoil without no longer carried his
thought beyond its one converging centre. SHE had come to him on the
wings of the storm, even as she had been borne to him on the summer
fog-cloud. Now and then the wind shook the cabin, but he heeded it not.
He had no fears for its safety; it presented its low gable to the full fury
of the wind that year by year had piled, and even now was piling,
protecting buttresses of sand against it. With each succeeding gust it
seemed to nestle more closely to its foundations, in the whirl of flying
sand that rattled against its roof and windows. It was nearly midnight
when a sudden thought brought him to his feet. What if SHE were
exposed to the fury of such a night as this? What could he do to help
her? Perhaps even now, as he sat there idle, she--Hark! was not that a
gun--No? Yes, surely!
He hurriedly unbolted the door, but the strength of the wind and the
impact of drifted sand resisted his efforts. With a new and feverish
strength possessing him he forced it open wide enough to permit his
egress when the wind caught him as a feather, rolled him over and over,
and then, grappling him again, held him down hard and fast against the
drift. Unharmed, but unable to move, he lay there, hearing the
multitudinous roar of the storm, but unable to distinguish one familiar

sound in the savage medley. At last he managed to crawl flat on his
face to the cabin, and refastening the door, threw himself upon his bed.
He was awakened from a fitful dream of his Cousin Maria. She with a
supernatural strength seemed to be holding the door against some
unseen, unknown power that moaned and strove without, and threw
itself in despairing force against the cabin. He could see the lithe
undulations of her form as she alternately yielded to its power, and
again drew the door against it, coiling herself around the log-hewn
doorpost with a hideous, snake-like suggestion. And then a struggle and
a heavy blow, which shook the very foundations of the structure, awoke
him. He leaped to his feet, and into an inch of water! By the flickering
firelight he could see it oozing and dripping from the crevices of the
logs and broadening into a pool by the chimney. A scrap of paper torn
from an envelope was floating idly on its current. Was it the overflow
of the backed-up waters of the river? He was not left long in doubt.
Another blow upon the gable of