Thomas Jefferson Brown | Page 4

water spurted in, and Lady Isobel turned to him with a little scream, her beautiful blue eyes wide and filled with horror.
"Don't be afraid," he said. "Here, take this jacket and hold it down tight over the seam. We'll reach the island, all right."
Lady Isobel held the jacket over the hole, and Thomas Jefferson Brown put a strength into his paddle that threatened to crack off the handle. After a minute or two, he saw a little trickle of water, beginning to ooze in about the edges of the jacket. He leaned back for an instant, and signaled Lord Meton to bend over toward him.
"Take off your clothes," he said, so low that Lady Isobel couldn't hear. "Can you swim?"
"Not a stroke," said Lord Meton, and his face went as white as chalk; but it was no whiter than Thomas Jefferson Brown's.
When a birchbark seam begins to part there's no power on earth that will hold it when the canoe is heavily loaded. A few minutes later, the water was gushing in by the quart about Lady Isobel's feet. She fought hard to hold it back. When at last she saw that it was hopeless, she turned again, to see Lord Meton in his underwear, and Thomas Jefferson Brown stripped of everything but his shirt and his buckskin trousers, which don't water-sog. He laughed straight into her face, as if it was all an amusing joke; and then, suddenly, he began playing that banjo thing with his mouth.
It was all so strange, with the beat of the sea, the wail of the wind, and Thomas Jefferson Brown sitting there as if nothing were happening, that Lady Isobel just stared in astonishment, while the water gushed in about her. At last he put down his paddle, and stretched out both hands; and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that her two hands should come out to meet his.
"Listen," he said, and his eyes were telling her again what they told her on the day when he brought her in from the York boat. "You'll do as I tell you, won't you? And you won't be afraid?"
For an instant Lady Isobel looked at Lord Meton, shrinking and shivering in the stern of the canoe; and then she looked back to the other man's face, and blue fires seemed to leap into her eyes.
"With you--no, I'm not afraid," she said.
She leaned toward him, nearer and nearer, as the water rose about them, looking straight into his eyes. They both knew in that moment that it was the man and the woman who had triumphed, and that for them the lady and the gentleman were dead.
"I'm not afraid--with you," she said again.
Her lips trembled, and her golden hair swept over his breast, and Thomas Jefferson Brown bent down and kissed her once upon the mouth. Then he said, as if he were speaking to a little girl:
"Do not be afraid, and hold to the edge of the canoe when it fills. The wind will carry us to Harrison's Island."
He turned to Lord Meton, and repeated the words; and just then the birchbark began to settle under them. With one hand gripping the side, Thomas Jefferson Brown leaped over the sea. Lower and lower settled the canoe with almost a scream, Lord Meton cried above the wind:
"Good Lord, it won't hold us up!"
For a few moments Thomas Jefferson relieved the canoe of his weight, and the bark rose again, slowly. Then, with a gasp, he clutched at the side again, and into Lady Isobel's drenched face, half hid the wet veil of her shining hair.
"The canoe won't hold us all up," he said trying to smile. "But it will hold two--you two and the wind is taking it to the island, four miles to the island, and I may be make it."
He knew that he never could make it; no man could swim so far in the chill waters of Hudson Bay; but he spoke as if his words were "I'm going to let go and try. Isobel, my love, will you kiss me?"
She threw one arm about his neck. Meton, clutching with frantic terror to the canoe saw nothing of what happened, nor did he hear the sobbing cry of Lady Isobel's heart as she kissed Thomas Jefferson Brown, once, and then three times, before he dropped back into the sea again.
"Good-by, sweetheart!" he said.
In the eyes that looked up at her, in his eyes in the one last look of love that he said, "Good-by." Lady Isobel saw the truth, and stretched out her arm to him.
"Stop! Come back! Take me with you!" she cried. "I want to go with you!"
And there, in the wildness of that sea, four miles from shore, Thomas Jefferson Brown seemed to heave himself up