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Yet he managed to fill the days to his satisfaction. Standing in the stable, he loved to watch the snow-capped mountains, and the tiny white clouds scudding around them, and the mellow radiance of golden sunlight streaming over them.
Suppose, now, the marquis were caught out in blowy weather and the wind worked in under his tucks and the ratlines pulled loose and, all full-rigged and helpless, bellying and billowing and flapping and jibing, he went scudding against his will before the gale. Could he hope to tack and go about before he blew clear over into the next county? I doubt it.
The men all came to the edge of the float to meet it and then, just as all seemed well, a dark patch of wind came scudding across the water, filled the door's sail, and sent the door kiting off to the right again. The game was up, The door was going to miss the float by sixty or seventy feet.
"Aren't you feeling a little that way yourself?" said Forsythe. "I am. I'll take a look around before I turn in." He left behind him a silent crowd. His return was prompt and swift. "Come on deck," he said. Every man leaped as to an order. There was that in Forsythe's voice which stung. The weather had cleared somewhat, though scudding wrack still blew across them to the westward.
Further weeks were consumed in awaiting reenforcements which never came; and in early October, when the wild geese were scudding southward before the first snow flurries of the coming winter, the commandant started for the reconquest with a motley force of thirty-six British regulars, forty-five local volunteers, seventy-nine local militia, and sixty Indians.
A chilly wind and a drizzling rain filled the heavens with gloom; mist-clouds rolled over the land; a gray fog trailed lazily along the harbor; the scudding clouds vaulted along the heavens as if driven by the furies; and, indeed, the drenched earth was bespread with a pall of gloom.
The wind was freshening from the south, the sea was rising, thin mists, a species of scout from the main body of the fog lying off in the east, were scudding across our track. James Goss, our captain, threw out a hint of a little difficulty in getting back. But Yankee energy was indomitable.
An immense body of white smoke rushed from the muzzle of the cannon, followed by a sheet of vivid fire, until, losing its power, it yielded to the wind, and, as it rose from the water, spread like a cloud, and, passing through the masts of the schooner, was driven far to leeward, and soon blended in the mists which were swiftly scudding before the fresh breezes of the ocean.
The black, scudding clouds, and the squalls of rain and sleet and snow, whitening and melting and vanishing, and the cold, clear nights, with crackling frost, all retarded the work of the warming sun. The day came, however, when the greens held their own with the grays; and this was the assurance of nature that spring could not be denied, and that summer would follow.
I also saw another lot of some twenty or thirty scudding away over the rocks and stony hills these were probably the women and children. Passing their last night's encampment, we saw that they had left all their valuables behind them these we left untouched.
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