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Two days after sighting The Juliet they raised another ship, one of the sailing fleet which they knew to be hovering in the offing, and then on the fifth of the month the capricious current opened a way for them. Slowly at first they pushed on between the floes into a vast area of slush-ice, thence to a stretch as open and placid as a country mill-pond.
Still farther to leeward was a great headland, and I bore off for that. This was retracing my course toward Sandy Point, for the gale was from the southwest. I had the sloop soon under good control, however, and in a short time rounded to under the lee of a mountain, where the sea was as smooth as a mill-pond, and the sails flapped and hung limp while she carried her way close in.
But he could not rejoice over it untroubled, for the bargain which he had made with the nix tormented his soul. Whenever he passed the mill-pond, he feared she might ascend and remind him of his debt. He never let the boy himself go near the water. "Beware," he said to him, "if thou dost but touch the water, a hand will rise, seize thee, and draw thee down."
He turned his horse over to a stable boy and went across to the little frame cottage that served as office and home for him. While he sat on the veranda that almost hung over the mill-pond of the other stream three of the Falins came riding back. One of them had left something at the hotel, and while he was gone in for it, another put a bullet through the sign, and seeing Hale rode over to him.
And as he sat, blind to the moon, dreaming of a time when he would control Presidents and dominate courts if they crossed his path, out on the mill-pond under an elm tree that spread like a canopy upon the water, a boy, letting the oars hang loosely, was playing the mandolin to a girl a pretty girl withal, blue as to eyes, fair as to hair, strong as to mouth and chin, and glorious as to forehead who leaned back in the boat, played with the overhanging branches, and listened and looked at the moon, and let God's miracle work unhindered in her heart.
A glorious day, a fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, a sea like a mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, a fair, solitary vessel, gliding across the surface of the water like a woman stealing out to a tryst it was a picture full of harmony. That mere speck full of movement was a starting-point whence the soul of man could descry the immutable vast of space.
So next morning she went again to the flowery meadow and sought the witch in her hut, and told her of her grief. The old woman counselled her to go to the mill-pond the next full moon and play upon a golden flute, and then to lay the flute on the bank.
But, by various means, they had learned just where the nuts grew most plentifully that season; and quite a list of available places had been tabulated: to the Guernsey Woods for blacks; plenty of shagbarks, and some shellbarks to be gathered over at the old Morton Place, where no one had lived these seven years now; and they said the chestnuts away up in that region miles beyond the mill-pond was bearing a record crop this season, as if to make amends for lean years a-plenty.
Perhaps, as stated, we may abandon the Monroe Doctrine: that is the easiest way, and the easiest way, for a nation or an individual, is usually the way of damnation. Even so, suppose the nation in question to say, "My national aspirations demand the Panama Canal, the Philippine Islands, or Long Island and the Port of New York." Why not? The Atlantic Ocean is only a mill-pond.
"Guess I knows 'bout how many dey is now," said Dick soberly; and he was not far from right, for there were no fish to speak of in that willow-bordered mill-pond. "Mrs. Myers will hardly be up so early as this," said Dab. "We can get our trunks over by and by. Let's have a look at the village. Joe, it's your turn to steer now. You and Fuz know how the land lies."
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