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Updated: May 1, 2025
His gaze searched the obscurity of the stair; it was empty; but from above came the sound of a heavy, dragging step. Outside she cowered pitifully from the violent blast of the wind, the boundless, stirred space. They made their way about the corner of the house, leaving behind the pale, glimmering rectangle of the lighted window. In the thicket Woolfolk was forced to proceed more slowly.
Then: "I met that Nicholas," Halvard admitted; "without a knife." "Well?" Woolfolk insisted. "There's something wrong with this cursed place," Halvard said defiantly. "You can laugh, but there's a matter in the air that's not natural. My grandmother could have named it. She heard the ravens that called Tollfsen's death, and read Linga's eyes before she strangulated herself.
Woolfolk was fast determining to go up to the house and insist upon Millie's hearing him, when unexpectedly she appeared in a somber, fluttering cloak, with her head uncovered and hair blown back from her pale brow. He waited until she had passed him, and then rose, softly calling her name. She stopped and turned, with a hand pressed to her heart. "I was afraid you'd gone out," she told him.
He must act at once! How? A thousand men could not find Iscah Nicholas in the confused darkness without. To raise the scattered and meager neighborhood would consume an entire day. The wind agitated a rocking chair in the hall, an erratic creaking responded, and Woolfolk started forward, and stopped as he heard and then identified the noise.
The oars made a silken swish in the still bay as he pulled away from the yacht. The latter's riding light, swung on the forestay, hung without a quiver, like a fixed yellow star. He looked once over his shoulder, and then the bow of the tender ran with a soft shock upon the beach. Woolfolk bedded the anchor in the sand and then stood gazing curiously before him.
He rose with an uncouth abruptness, a meager commonplace, and hurried over the path to the beach, toward the refuge, the release, of the Gar. John Woolfolk woke at dawn. A thin, bluish light filled the cabin; above, Halvard was washing the deck. The latter was vigorously swabbing the cockpit when Woolfolk appeared, but he paused. "Perhaps," the sailor said, "you will stay here for a day or two.
"Why," she exclaimed, "it couldn't be neater if you were two nice old ladies!" "I warn you," Woolfolk replied, "Halvard will not regard that particularly as a compliment. He will assure you that the order of a proper yacht is beyond the most ambitious dream of a mere housekeeper." She laughed as Halvard placed a chair for her.
The stillness was emphasized by the ceaseless murmur of the waves breaking on the far, seaward bars. John Woolfolk brought the ketch up where he intended to anchor and called to the stooping white-clad figure in the bow: "Let go!" There was an answering splash, a sudden rasp of hawser, the booms swung idle, and the yacht imperceptibly settled into her berth.
Between the crumbling piles there was the faint trace of a footway, and Woolfolk advance to where, inside a dilapidated sheltering fence, he came upon a dark, compact mass of trees and smelled the increasing sweetness of orange blossoms. He struck the remains of a board path, and progressed with the cold, waxen leaves of the orange trees brushing his face.
It possessed, Woolfolk recognized, a considerable unwieldy strength, and was completely covered by a variously spotted and streaked apron. "Are you Nicholas?" John Woolfolk demanded. The other nodded. "Then, I take it, you are the man who broke my water cask." "It was full of our water," Nicholas replied in a thick voice. "That," said Woolfolk, "I am not going to argue with you.
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