along with his stick and with a great air of excitement. “I said they were only to go when there was no wind. Didn’t you hear me, Katie? When there was no wind—I said it as plain as anything. And look at that; look at that!” He was stammering with excitement, and could scarcely keep his standing in his unusual excitement.
“What is the matter, papa? Look at what? Oh, the boat. But we have nothing to do with any boat,” she cried. “Why should you disturb yourself? The people can surely take care of– Papa! what is it?”
He had sunk into a chair, one of those set ready on the grass for Stella and her friends, and was growing purple in the face and panting for breath. “You fool! you fool! Stella,” he cried, “Stella, my little girl. Oh, I’ll be even with those young fools when I catch them. They want to drown her. They want to run away with her. Stella! my little girl!”
Katherine had awakened to the fact before these interrupted words were half uttered. And naturally what she did was perfectly unreasonable. She rushed to the edge of the cliff, waving aloft the white parasol in her hand, beckoning wildly, and crying, “Come back, come back!” She called all the servants, the gardener and his man, the footmen who were looking out alarmed from the porch. “Go, go,” she cried, stamping her foot, “and bring them back; go and bring them back!” There was much rushing and running, and one at least of the men flung himself helter-skelter down the steep stair that led to the beach, while the gardeners stood gazing from the cliff. Katherine clapped her hands in her excitement, giving wild orders. “Go! go! don’t stand there as if nothing could be done; go and bring them back!”
“Not to contradict you, Miss Katherine–” the gardener began.
“Oh, don’t speak to me—don’t stand talking—go, go, and bring them back.”
Mr. Tredgold had recovered his breath a little. “Let us think,” he said—“let us think, and don’t talk nonsense, Kate. There’s a breeze blowing up, and where will it drive them to, gardener? Man, can’t you tell where it’ll drive them to? Round by the Needles, I shouldn’t wonder, the dangerousest coast. Oh, my little girl, my little girl! Shall I ever see her again? And me that said they were never to go out but when there was no wind.”
“Not to the Needles, sir—not to the Needles when there’s a westerly breeze. More likely round the cliffs Bembridge way; and who can stop ’em when they’re once out? It’s only a little cruise; let ’em alone and they’ll come home, with their tails be’ind them, as the rhyme says.”
“And I said they were only to go out if there was no wind, gardener!” The old gentleman was almost weeping with alarm and anxiety, but yet he was comforted by what the man said.
“They are going the contrary way,” cried Katherine.
“Bless you, miss, that’s tacking, to catch the breeze. They couldn’t go far, sir, could they? without no wind.”
“And that’s just what I wanted, that they should not go far—just a little about in the bay to please her. Oh, my little girl! She will be dead with fright; she will catch her death of cold, she will.”
“Not a bit, sir,” cried the gardener. “Miss Stella’s a very plucky one. She’ll enjoy the run, she’ll enjoy the danger.”
“The danger!” cried father and sister together.
“What a fool I am! There ain’t none, no more than if they was in a duck pond,” the gardener said.
And, indeed, to see the white sail flying in the sunshine over the blue sea, there did not seem much appearance of danger. With his first apprehensions quieted down, Mr. Tredgold stumbled with the help of his daughter’s arm to the edge of the cliff within the feathery line of the tamarisk trees, attended closely by the gardener, who, as an islander born, was supposed to know something of the sea. The hearts of the anxious gazers fluctuated as the little yacht danced over the water, going down when she made a little lurch and curtsey before the breeze, and up when she went steadily by the wind, making one of those long tacks which the gardener explained were all made, though they seemed to lead the little craft so far away, with the object of getting back.
“Them two young gentlemen, they knows what they’re about,” the gardener said.
“And there’s a sailor-man on board,” said Mr. Tredgold—“a man that knows everything about it, one of the crew whose business it is–”
“I don’t see no third man,” said the gardener doubtfully.
“Oh, yes, yes, there’s a sailor-man,” cried the father. The old gentleman spoke with a kind of sob in his throat; he was ready to cry with weakness and trouble and exasperation, as the little vessel, instead of replying to the cries and wailings of his anxiety by coming right home as seemed to him the simplest way, went on tacking and turning, sailing further and further off, then heeling over as if she would go down, then fluttering with an empty sail that hung about the mast before she struck off in another direction, but never turning back. “They are taking her off to America!” he cried, half weeping, leaning heavily on Katherine’s arm.
“They’re tacking, sir, tacking, to bring her in,” said the gardener.
“Oh, don’t speak to me!” cried the unhappy father; “they are carrying her off to America. Who was it said there was nothing between this and America, Katie? Oh, my little girl! my little girl!”
And it may be partly imagined what were the feelings of those inexperienced and anxious people when the early October evening began to fall, and the blue sky to be covered with clouds flying, gathering, and dispersing before a freshening westerly gale.
CHAPTER V
I will not enter in detail into the feelings of the father and sister on this alarming and dreadful night. No tragedy followed, the reader will feel well assured, or this history would never have been written. But the wind rose till it blew what the sailors called half a gale. It seemed to Katherine a hurricane—a horrible tempest, in which no such slender craft as that in which Stella had gone forth had a chance for life; and indeed the men on the pier with their conjectures as to what might have happened were not encouraging. She might have fetched Ventnor or one of those places by a long tack. She might have been driven out to the Needles. She mightn’t know her way with those gentlemen only as was famous sailors with a fair wind, but not used to dirty weather. Katherine spent all the night on the pier gazing out upon the waste of water now and then lighted up by a fitful moon. What a change—what a change from the golden afternoon! And what a difference from her own thoughts!—a little grudging of Stella’s all-success, a little wounded to feel herself always in the shade, and the horrible suggestion of Stella’s loss, the dread that overwhelmed her imagination and took all her courage from her. She stood on the end of the pier, with the wind—that wind which had driven Stella forth out of sound and sight—blowing her about, wrapping her skirts round her, loosing her hair, making her hold tight to the rail lest she should be blown away. Why should she hold tight? What did it matter, if Stella were gone, whether she kept her footing or not? She could never take Stella’s place with anyone. Her father would grudge her very existence that could not be sacrificed to save Stella. Already he had begun to reproach her. Why did you let her go? What is the use of an elder sister to a girl if she doesn’t interfere in such a case? And three years older, that ought to have been a mother to her.
Thus Mr. Tredgold had babbled in his misery before he was persuaded to lie down to await news which nothing that could be done would make any quicker. He had clamoured to send out boats—any number—after Stella. He had insisted upon hiring a steamer to go out in quest of her; but telegrams had to be sent far and wide and frantic messengers to Ryde—even to Portsmouth—before
