Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/67

1866.] "Best within, Mounchere Jacobus; it's an uncertain night; best within."

"You apprehend the rain?"

"No; it's a dry storm; unpleasant on this coast. Go in; there's no telling what frenzy may seize the wind, and Charlotte is alone."

But M. Jacobus did not go in. He had observed a curious motion on the part of both men, as they talked: bending their ears at intervals to listen intently, and keeping a keen scrutiny fixed on the small patch of ground at their feet, made visible by their lanterns. He saw, too, that Cathcart stooped, as he turned from them, and, picking up a crisp, yellow flake, showed it to his companion; and he fancied, too, that the grim face of the old Captain lost its color when he saw it. He would not go in: he had a right to see what danger threatened her,—to watch for it,—to know what were these messengers of coming death sent in from the silence yonder. And at that fancy, the old wonder and dread of the far darkness seized him, and he went slowly on through the mist, forgetting alike danger and warning.

With a mocking smile on his face, as he pursued his fantastic theory. What if the dead were not dead? What if, unforgetting and cruel, they could stretch out shadowy hands from that mysterious distance which they peopled, and summon the living to join them? What if Death itself served them to-night, and crept upon Charlotte and him unawares in some horror of this coming storm? Jacobus, like all skeptics, was superstitious; but he had courage and zest enough to fight down the terror that seized him, to pamper and play with it. He threw his lank length upon the wet beach, and clasped his hands under his head; where he disturbed the sand, gleamed sudden flashes of phosphoric light; he brought them out of the darkness with his finger: "Fit writing for the dead gone over to leave upon the shore for those who should follow!" he thought.

Lying on his back, and staring straight up into the fog-covered sky, the thunder of the sea, that before had filled the whole night, seemed to his startled senses to drive its direct tide beneath him,—to articulate, at last, with a new and unexpected meaning. He shut his eyes; the terror had taken shape; he lay drenched and shivering, his brain on fire with fancies. What was vision to Dante was real to him. He lay upon the edge of the fathomless gulf, warm and living, with the cry from Hades made audible to him; as it ebbed and flowed, it wailed like the wind through leafless forests; it shook the earth to its centre, then died into the solitary cry of one in nameless pain. Some broad, dark figure stood afterwards beside him in the fog, and a voice repeated the old word of the prophet,—

"Hell from beneath is moved to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee"

"There is no hell," he cried, getting up and staggering forward,—then smiled at his own folly.

It might have been Lufflin who had spoken, after all; he was well read in the Bible. But he could see no sign of their torches, in the stretch of damp, darkening fog; he was left alone to keep guard.

Jacobus tried to shake off his sickly fancies, and measure coolly whatever danger waited in this strange night; but it rose before him in a form so ghastly and new that his strength was but as a woman's. He was but a landsman,—dull and ignorant besides, outside his library. What was he to do, when the very ground trembled beneath his feet,—when the sky was blotted out,—when, there was lack of a single known stationary object to guide eye or ear? This side of that gray horizon of darkness which absorbed all his fears, the northern lights streamed up, a pale orange glare, and showed him a heavy, impenetrable bulwark of shadow, that rose closer and closer with each throb of the breakers, walling out the sea. His feet sank curiously in the yielding sand, as if he stood at the verge of a maelstrom. Some rough hand griping his shoulder roused him from his daze.

"Cathcart!" he said; then pointing