第42章

She waited until the last man had stepped into the boat, in nervous dread of some one remaining.Then, when the boat had vanished round the Point again, she ran back to the cottage, arrayed herself in her husband's pilot coat, hat, and boots, and launched the dingey.It was a heavy, slow, but luckily a stanch and seaworthy boat.It was not until she was well off shore that she began to feel the full fury of the wind and waves, and knew the difficulty and danger of her undertaking.She had decided that her shortest and most direct course was within a few points of the wind, but the quartering of the waves on the broad bluff bows of the boat tended to throw it to leeward, a movement that, while it retarded her forward progress, no doubt saved the little craft from swamping.

Again, the feebleness and shortness of her stroke, which never impelled her through a rising wave, but rather lifted her half way up its face, prevented the boat from taking much water, while her steadfast gaze, fixed only on the slowly retreating shore, kept her steering free from any fatal nervous vacillation, which the sight of the threatening seas on her bow might have produced.Preserved through her very weakness, ignorance, and simplicity of purpose, the dingey had all the security of a drifting boat, yet retained a certain gentle but persistent guidance.In this feminine fashion she made enough headway to carry her abreast of the Point, where she met the reflux current sweeping round it that carried her well along into the channel, now sluggish with the turn of the tide.

After half an hour's pulling, she was delighted to find herself again in a reverse current, abreast of her cottage, but steadily increasing her distance from it.She was, in fact, on the extreme outer edge of a vast whirlpool formed by the force of the gale on a curving lee shore, and was being carried to her destination in a semicircle around that bay which she never could have crossed.She was moving now in a line with the shore and the Fort, whose flagstaff, above its green, square, and white quarters, she could see distinctly, and whose lower water battery and landing seemed to stretch out from the rocks scarcely a mile ahead.Protected by the shore from the fury of the wind, and even of the sea, her progress was also steadily accelerated by the velocity of the current, mingling with the ebbing tide.A sudden fear seized her.She turned the boat's head towards the shore, but it was swept quickly round again; she redoubled her exertions, tugging frantically at her helpless oars.She only succeeded in getting the boat into the trough of the sea, where, after a lurch that threatened to capsize it, it providentially swung around on its short keel and began to drift stern on.She was almost abreast of the battery now; she could hear the fitful notes of a bugle that seemed blown and scattered above her head; she even thought she could see some men in blue uniforms moving along the little pier.She was passing it;another fruitless effort to regain her ground, but she was swept along steadily towards the Gate, the whitening bar, and the open sea.

She knew now what it all meant.This was what she had come for;this was the end! Beyond, only a little beyond, just a few moments longer to wait, and then, out there among the breakers was the rest that she had longed for but had not dared to seek.It was not her fault; they could not blame HER.He would come back and never know what had happened--nor even know how she had tried to atone for her deceit.And he would find his house in possession of--of--those devils! No! No! she must not die yet, at least not until she had warned the Fort.She seized the oars again with frenzied strength;the boat had stopped under the unwonted strain, staggered, tried to rise in an uplifted sea, took part of it over her bow, struck down Mrs.Bunker under half a ton of blue water that wrested the oars from her paralyzed hands like playthings, swept them over the gunwale, and left her lying senseless in the bottom of the boat.

......

"Hold har-rd--or you'll run her down."

"Now then, Riley,--look alive,--is it slapin' ye are!""Hold yer jaw, Flanigan, and stand ready with the boat-hook.Now then, hold har-rd!"The sudden jarring and tilting of the water-logged boat, a sound of rasping timbers, the swarming of men in shirtsleeves and blue trousers around her, seemed to rouse her momentarily, but she again fainted away.

When she struggled back to consciousness once more she was wrapped in a soldier's jacket, her head pillowed on the shirt-sleeve of an artillery corporal in the stern sheets of that eight-oared government barge she had remembered.But the only officer was a bareheaded, boyish lieutenant, and the rowers were an athletic but unseamanlike crew of mingled artillerymen and infantry.

"And where did ye drift from, darlint?"

Mrs.Bunker bridled feebly at the epithet.

"I didn't drift.I was going to the Fort.""The Fort, is it?"

"Yes.I want to see the general."

"Wadn't the liftenant do ye? Or shure there's the adjutant; he's a foine man.""Silence, Flanigan," said the young officer sharply.Then turning to Mrs.Bunker he said, "Don't mind HIM, but let his wife take you to the canteen, when we get in, and get you some dry clothes."But Mrs.Bunker, spurred to convalescence at the indignity, protested stiffly, and demanded on her arrival to be led at once to the general's quarters.A few officers, who had been attracted to the pier by the rescue, acceded to her demand.

She recognized the gray-haired, handsome man who had come ashore at her house.With a touch of indignation at her treatment, she briefly told her story.But the general listened coldly and gravely with his eyes fixed upon her face.

"You say you recognized in the leader of the party a man you had seen before.Under what circumstances?"Mrs.Bunker hesitated with burning cheeks."He came to take Colonel Marion from our place.""When you were hiding him,--yes, we've heard the story.Now, Mrs.