University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.
SAILING.

ON the Saturday morning after this Friday-evening
boat-ride, Charlton was vigilant as ever, and
yet Saturday was not a dangerous day. It was the
busy day at the Emporium, and he had not much
to fear from Westcott, whose good quality was
expressed by one trite maxim to which he rigidly adhered.
“Business before pleasure” uttered the utmost self-denial of
his life. He was fond of repeating his motto, with no little
exultation in the triumph he had achieved over his pleasure-loving
disposition. To this fidelity to business he owed his
situation as “Agent,” or head-clerk, of the branch store of
Jackson, Jones & Co. If he could have kept from spending
money as fast as he made it, he might have been a partner in
the firm. However, he rejoiced in the success he had attained,
and, to admiring neophytes who gazed in admiration on his
perilous achievement of rather reckless living and success in
gaining the confidence of his employers, he explained the marvel
by uttering his favorite adage in his own peculiar style:
“Business before pleasure! By George! That's the doctrine!
A merchant don't care how fast you go to the devil out of
hours, if you keep his business straight. Business before pleasure!
That's the ticket! He! he! By George!”

When evening came, and Charlton felt that he had but
one more day of standing guard, his hopes rose, he talked to
Isabel Marlay with something of exultation. And he thought
it due to Miss Marlay to ask her to make one of the boating-party.
They went to the hotel, where Miss Minorkey
joined them. Albert found it much more convenient walking
with three ladies than with two. Isa and Katy walked on arm-in-arm,
and left Albert to his téte-a-téte with Helen. And as
Sunday evening would be the very last on which he should
see her before leaving for the East, he found it necessary to
walk slowly and say much. For lovers who see each other a
great deal, have more to say the more they are together.

At the lake a disappointment met them. The old pine boat
was in use. It was the evening of the launching of the new
sail-boat, “The Lady of the Lake,” and there was a party of
people on the shore. Two young men, in a spirit of burlesque
and opposition, had seized on the old boat and had chalked
upon her bow, “The Pirate's Bride.” With this they were
rowing up and down the lake, and exciting much merriment in
the crowd on the shore.

Ben Towle, who was one of the principal stockholders in
“The Lady of the Lake,” and who had been suspected of a
tender regard for Isabel Marlay, promptly offered Albert and
his party seats in the boat on her first trip. There were just
four vacancies, he said. The three ladies had stepped aboard,
and Albert was following, when the ex-sailor who held the
rudder touched his arm and said, “I don't think it's safe, Mr.
Charlton, fer nobody else to git in. She's got 'leven now, and
ef the wind freshens, twelve would be dangerous.”

“Oh! I'll stay out!” said Albert, retreating.

“Come, Albert, take my place,” said Towle. “You're welcome
to it.”

“No, I won't, Ben; you sit still, and I'll stand on the shore
and cheer.”

Just as the boat was about to leave her moorings, Smith
Westcott came up and insisted on getting in.

“'Twon't do, Mr. Wes'cott. 'Ta'n't safe,” said the helmsman.
“I jest begged Mr. Charlton not to go. She's got a
full load now.”

“Oh! I don't weigh anything. Lighter'n a feather. Only
an infant. And besides, I'm going anyhow, by George!” and
with that he started to get aboard. But Albert had anticipated
him by getting in at the other end of the boat and taking
the only vacant seat. The Privileged Infant scowled fiercely,
but Charlton affected not to see him, and began talking in a
loud tone to Ben Towle about the rigging. The line was thrown
off and the boat pushed out, the wind caught the new white
sail, and the “Lady of the Lake” started along in the shallows,
gradually swinging round toward the open water. Soon
after her keel had ceased to grind upon the gravel, Albert
jumped out, and, standing over boot top in water, waved his
hat and wished them a pleasant voyage, and all the ladies in
the boat waved their handkerchiefs at him, appreciating his
efforts to keep the boat from being overloaded, but not thinking
of the stronger motive Charlton had for keeping Smith
Westcott ashore. They could not know how much exultation
Albert felt as he sat down on the green grass and poured the
water from his boots.

There was a fine breeze, the boat sailed admirably, the
party aboard laughed and talked and sang; their voices made

merry music that reached the shore. The merry music was
irritating discord to the ears of Westcott, it made him swear
bitterly at Charlton. I am afraid that it made Charlton
happy to think of Westcott swearing at him. There is great
comfort in being the object of an enemy's curses sometimes—
when the enemy is down, and you are above and master.
I think the consciousness that Westcott was swearing at him
made even the fine sunset seem more glorious to Charlton.
The red clouds were waving banners of victory.

But in ten minutes the situation had changed. Albert saw
Westcott walking across the beaver-dam at the lower end of
the lake, and heard him hallooing to the young men who
were rowing the “Pirate's Bride” up and down and around the
“Lady of the Lake,” for the ugly old boat was swiftest. The
Pirate's Bride landed and took Westcott aboard, and all of
Albert's rejoicing was turned to cursing, for there, right before
his eyes, the Pirate's Bride ran her brown hull up alongside
the white and graceful Lady of the Lake, and Smith Westcott
stepped from the one to the other. The beauty of the sunset
was put out. The new boat sailed up and down the little lake
more swiftly and gracefully than ever as the breeze increased,
but Albert hated it.

By some change or other in seats Westcott at last got alongside
Katy. Albert distinctly saw the change made, and his
anger was mmgled with despair. For Isabel and Helen were
in the other end of the boat, and there were none to help.
And so on, on, in the gray dusk of the evening, the boat kept
sailing from one end of the lake to the other, and as it passed
now and then near him, he could see that Smith was in conversation
with little Katy.

“You needn't worry, Mr. Charlton, I'll fix him.” It was
the voice of the Guardian Angel. “I'll fix him, shore as
shootin'.” And there he stood looking at Albert. For the first
time now it struck Albert that George Gray was a little insane.
There was a strange look in his eyes. If he should kill
Westcott, the law would not hold him accountable. Nobody
would be accountable, and Katy would be saved.

But in a moment Albert's better feeling was uppermost.
The horribleness of murder came distinctly before him. He
shuddered that he should have entertained the thought of
suffering it.

“You see, Mr. Charlton,” said Gray, with eyes having that
strange mysterious look that only helongs to the eyes of people
who are at least on the borders of insanity, “you see this 'ere
pistol's got five bar'ls, all loadened. I tuck out the ole loads
las' night and filled her up weth powder what's shore to go
off. New you leave that air matter to me, will you?”

“Let me see your revolver,” said Albert.

Gray handed it to him, and Charlton examined it a minute,
and then, with a sudden resolution, he got to his feet, ran forward
a few paces, and hurled the pistol with all his might
into the lake.

“Don't let us commit murder,” he said, turning round and
meeting the excited eyes of the half-insane poet.

“Well, maybe you're right, but I'll be hanged ef I think
it's hardly far and squar and gentlemanly to wet a feller's catridges
that-a-way.”

“I had to,” said Albert, trembling. “If I hadn't, you or I
would have been a murderer before morning.”

“Maybe so, but they ain't nothin else to be done. Ef you

don't let me kill the devil, why, then the devil will pack your
sister off, and that's the eend on't.”

The moon shone out, and still the boat went sailing up
and down the lake, and still the party in the boat laughed and
talked and sang merry songs, and still Charlton walked up and
down the shore, though almost all the rest of the spectators
had gone, and the Poet sat down in helpless dejection. And
still Smith Westcott sat and talked to Katy. What he said
need not be told: how, while all the rest laughed and sang,
the Privileged Infant was serious; and how he appealed to
Katy's sympathies by threatening to jump off into the lake;
and how he told her that they must be married, and have it all
over at once. Then, when it was all over, Albert wouldn't
feel bad about it any more. Brothers never did. When he
and Albert should get to be brothers-in-law, they'd get on
splendidly. By George! Some such talk as this he had as they
sailed up and down the lake. Just what it was will never
be known, whether he planned an elopement that very night, or
on Sunday night, or on the night which they must pass in
Red Owl Landing, nobody knows. Isabel Marlay, who saw all,
was sure that Smith had carried all his points. He had convinced
the sweet and trusting Katy that an immediate marriage
would be best for Brother Albert as well as for themselves.

And as the boat sailed on, tacking to and fro, even the
pilot got over his anxiety at the overloading which had taken
place when Westcott got in. The old tar said to Towle that
she carried herself beautifully.

Five minutes after he made the remark, while Westcott was
talking to Katy, and playfully holding his fingers in the water
as he leaned over the gunwale that almost dipped, there came

a flaw in the wind, and the little boat, having too much canvas
and too much loading, careened suddenly and capsized.

There was a long, broken, mingled, discordant shriek as of
a dozen voices on different keys uttering cries of terror and
despair. There was the confusion of one person falling over
another; there was the wild grasping for support, the seizing
of each other's garments and arms, the undefined and undefinable
struggle of the first desperate minute after a boat has
capsized, the scream that dies to a gurgle in the water and then
breaks out afresh, louder and sharper than before, and then is
suddenly smothered into a gurgle again. There were all these
things, there was an alarm on the shore, a rush of people, and
then there came stillness, and those minutes of desperate waiting,
in which the drowning people cling to rigging and boat,
and test the problem of human endurance. It is a race between
the endurance of frightened, chilled, drowning people,
and the stupid lack of presence of mind of those on shore. All
the inmates of the boat got hold of something, and for a minute
all their heads were out of water. Their eyes were so near
to the water, that not even the most self-possessed of them
could see what exertions were being made by people on shore
to help them. Thus they clung a minute, no one saying anything,
when Jane Downing, who held to the rigging at some
distance from the boat, paralyzed by fear, let go, and slowly
sank out of sight, saying never a word as she went down, but
looking with beseeching eyes at the rest, who turned away as
the water closed over her, and held on more tenaciously than
ever, and wondered whether help ever would reach them. And
this was only at the close of the first minute. There were
twenty-nine other minutes before help came.