第102章

It is to be all made of sighs and tears;

It is to be all made of faith and service;It is to be all made of phantasy;

All made of passion, and all made of wishes;All adoration, duty, and observance;

All humbleness, all patience, and impatience;All purity, all trial, all observance.

SHAKESPEARE.

It was near noon when the gale broke; and then its force abated as suddenly as its violence had arisen.In less than two hours after the wind fell, the surface of the lake, though still agitated, was no longer glittering with foam;and in double that time, the entire sheet presented the or-dinary scene of disturbed water, that was unbroken by the violence of a tempest.Still the waves came rolling inces-santly towards the shore, and the lines of breakers re-mained, though the spray had ceased to fly; the combing of the swells was more moderate, and all that there was of violence proceeded from the impulsion of wind which had abated.

As it was impossible to make head against the sea that was still up, with the light opposing air that blew from the eastward, all thoughts of getting under way that after noon were abandoned.Jasper, who had now quietly re-sumed the command of the _Scud_, busied himself, however, in heaving-up the anchors, which were lifted in succession;the kedges that backed them were weighed, and everything was got in readiness for a prompt departure, as soon as the state of the weather would allow.In the meantime, they who had no concern with these duties sought such means of amusement as their peculiar circumstances allowed.

As is common with those who are unused to the confine-ment of a vessel, Mabel cast wistful eyes towards the shore;nor was it long before she expressed a wish that it were possible to land.The Pathfinder was near her at the time, and he assured her that nothing would be easier, as they had a bark canoe on deck, which was the best possible mode of conveyance to go through a surf.After the usual doubts and misgivings, the Sergeant was appealed to; his opinion proved to be favorable, and preparations to carry the whim into effect were immediately made.

The party which was to land consisted of Sergeant Dunham, his daughter, and the Pathfinder.Accustomed to the canoe, Mabel took her seat in the centre with great steadiness, her father was placed in the bows, while the guide assumed the office of conductor, by steering in the stern.There was little need of impelling the canoe by means of the paddle, for the rollers sent it forward at mo-ments with a violence that set every effort to govern its movements at defiance.More than once, before the shore was reached, Mabel repented of her temerity, but Path-finder encouraged her, and really manifested so much self-possession, coolness, and strength of arm himself, that even a female might have hesitated about owning all her ap-prehensions.Our heroine was no coward; and while she felt the novelty of her situation, in landing through a surf, she also experienced a fair proportion of its wild delight.

At moments, indeed, her heart was in her mouth, as the bubble of a boat floated on the very crest of a foaming breaker, appearing to skim the water like a swallow, and then she flushed and laughed, as, left by the glancing ele-ment, they appeared to linger behind as if ashamed of hav-ing been outdone in the headlong race.A few minutes sufficed for this excitement; for though the distance be-tween the cutter and the land considerably exceeded a quarter of a mile, the intermediate space was passed in a very few minutes.

On landing, the Sergeant kissed his daughter kindly, for he was so much of a soldier as always to feel more at home on _terra firma_ than when afloat; and, taking his gun, he announced his intention to pass an hour in quest of game.

"Pathfinder will remain near you, girl, and no doubt he will tell you some of the traditions of this part of the world, or some of his own experiences with the Mingos."The guide laughed, promised to have a care of Mabel, and in a few minutes the father had ascended a steep ac-clivity and disappeared in the forest.The others took an-other direction, which, after a few minutes of a sharp as-cent also, brought them to a small naked point on the promontory, where the eye overlooked an extensive and very peculiar panorama.Here Mabel seated herself on a fragment of fallen rock to recover her breath and strength, while her companion, on whose sinews no personal exertion seemed to make any impression, stood at her side, leaning in his own and not ungraceful manner on his long rifle.

Several minutes passed, and neither spoke; Mabel, in par-ticular, being lost in admiration of the view.

The position the two had obtained was sufficiently ele-vated to command a wide reach of the lake, which stretched away towards the north-east in a boundless sheet, glitter-ing beneath the rays of an afternoon's sun, and yet betray-ing the remains of that agitation which it had endured while tossed by the late tempest.The land set bounds to its limits in a huge crescent, disappearing in distance to-wards the south-east and the north.Far as the eye could reach, nothing but forest was visible, not even a solitary sign of civilization breaking in upon the uniform and grand magnificence of nature.The gale had driven the _Scud_ beyond the line of those forts with which the French were then endeavoring to gird the English North Ameri-can possessions; for, following the channels of communi-cation between the great lakes, their posts were on the banks of the Niagara, while our adventurers had reached a point many leagues westward of that celebrated strait.

The cutter rode at single anchor, without the breakers, re-sembling some well-imagined and accurately-executed toy, intended rather for a glass case than for struggles with the elements which she had so lately gone through, while the canoe lay on the narrow beach, just out of reach of the waves that came booming upon the land, a speck upon the shingles.