CHAPTER XV
A NIGHT OF STORM
I will now tell the thing which happened to Kate in the house inZaandpoort Street that stormy night when for an hour she was left alone.
When Maisie went out, Kate heard the outer door shut with a crash asthe wind rushed in. The flames swirled up the wide chimney in thesitting-room, whereupon she rose and drew the curtain across the innerdoor. Then she went to the wood-box and piled fresh fagots about thegreat back-log, which had grown red and smouldering. For a long timeafter she had finished she knelt looking at the cheerful blaze. Shesighed deeply, as if her thoughts had not been of the same complexion.Then she rose and went to the window which looked out upon the canal.It was her favorite musing-place. She leaned her brow against thehalf-drawn dimity curtain, and watched the rain thresh the waters tillthey gleamed gray-white in the sparkle of the lights along the canalbank. A vague unrest and uncertainty filled her soul.
"Wat, Wat!" she whispered, half to herself. "What would I not give if Imight speak to you to-night--only tell you that I would never be hastyor angry with you again!"
And she set her hand upon her side as though she had been suddenlystricken by a pain of some grievous sort. Yet not a pang of sharpagony, but only a dull, empty ache, lonely and hungry, was abidingthere.
"How he must hate me!" she said. "It was my fault that he went awayin anger. He would never have gone to that place had we not first beencruel to him here."
And in his cell, listening dully, to the tramp of the sparse passers-bycoming up to his window through the tumultuous blowing of all the hornsof the tempest, Wat was saying to himself the same thing: "How she musthate me--thus to walk with him and let him point a scornful hand at myprison window."
But in the street of Zaandpoort, the lonely girl's uneasiness was fastdeepening into terror.
Suddenly Kate lifted her head. There was surely a slight noise at theouter door. She had a vague feeling that a foot was coming up thestair. She listened intently, but heard nothing save the creakingof doors within and the hurl of the tempest without. A thought camesharply to her, and her heart leaped palpably in her breast. Could itpossibly be that Wat, released from prison, had come directly back toher? Her lips parted, and a very lovely light came into her eyes, as oflate was used to do when one spoke well of Wat Gordon.
She stood gazing fixedly at the door, but the sound was not repeated.Then she looked at the place where he had stood on the threshold thatfirst night when he came bursting in upon them--the time when he sawher lie with her head low in Maisie's lap.
"Dear Wat!" she said softly, over and over to herself--"dear, dear Wat!"
But alas! Wat Gordon was lying stretched on his pallet in the roundtower of the prison of Amersfort; while without another maid called tohim in the drenching rain, which love did not permit her to feel. Hecould neither hear the tender thrill in his true love's voice, nor yetrespond to the pleading of her once proud heart, which love had nowmade gentle. He heard nothing but the roar of the wind which whirledaway towards the North Sea, yelling with demon laughter as it shookhis window bar, and shouted mocking words over the sill.
But all suddenly, as Kate looked again through the window, she becameaware that certain of the lights on the canal edge were being blottedout. Something black seemed to rise up suddenly before the window.The girl started back, and even as she stood motionless, strickenwith sudden fear, the window was forcibly opened, and a man in a longcloak, and wearing a black mask, stepped into the room. Kate was toomuch astonished to cry out. She turned quickly towards the door withintent to flee. But before she could reach it two men entered by it,masked and equipped like the first. None of the three uttered a word ofthreatening or explanation; they only advanced and seized her arms. Ina moment they had wrapped Kate in a great cloak, slipped a soft elasticgag into her mouth, and carried her towards the window. The singlewild cry which she had time to utter before her mouth was stopped waswhirled away by a gust yet fiercer than any of those which all nighthad ramped and torn their way to the sea betwixt the irregular gablesand twisted chimney-stalks of the ancient street of Zaandpoort.
The man who had entered first through the window now received her inhis arms. He clambered down by a ladder which was set on the canalbank, and held in its position by two men. Yet another man stood readyto assist, and so in a few moments Kate found herself upon a horse,while the man who had come first through the window mounted behind herand kept about her waist an arm of iron strength. By this time Kate washalf unconscious with the terror of her position. She knew not whithershe was being taken, and could make no guess at the identity of hercaptors.
She could, indeed, hear them talking together, but in a language whichshe could not understand and which she had never before heard. Thegag in her mouth did not greatly hurt her, but her arms were tightlyfastened to her sides, and her cramped position on the saddle in frontof her captor became, as the miles stretched themselves out behindthem, an exquisitely painful one.
With the beating of the horses' hoofs the cloak gradually dropped fromher eyes, so that Kate could discern dark hedge-rows and occasionaltrees drifting like smoke behind them as they rode. The lightningplayed about in front, dividing land and sky with its vivid pale-blueline. Then the thunder went roaring and galloping athwart the universe,and lo! on the back of that, the black and starless canopy shut downblacker than ever. Once through the folds of the cloak Kate saw a fieldof flowers, all growing neatly together in squares, lit up by thelightning. Every parallelogram stood clear as on a chess-board. Butthe color was wholly gone out of them, all being subdued to a ghastlypallor by the fierce brilliance of the zigzag flame.
To the dazed and terrified girl hours seemed to pass, and still thehorses did not stop. At last Kate could feel, by the uneven falling ofthe hoofs and by the slower pace of the beasts, that they had reachedrougher country, where the roads were less densely compacted than inthe neighborhood of the traffic of a city.
Then, after a little, the iron of the horseshoes grated sharply on thepebbles of the sea-shore. Men's voices cried harshly back and forth,lanterns flashed, snorting horses checked themselves, spraying thepebbles every way from their forefeet--and presently Kate felt herselfbeing lifted down from the saddle. So stiff was she with the constraintof her position that, but for the support of the man who helped herdown, she would have fallen among the stones.
The lightning still gleamed fitfully along the horizon. The wind wasblowing off shore, but steadily and with a level persistence which onemight lean against. The wild gustiness of the first burst of the stormhad passed away, and as the pale lightning flared up along the roughedges of the sea, which appeared to rise above her like a wall, Katecould momentarily see the slanting masts of a small vessel lying-tojust outside the bar, her bowsprit pointing this way and that, as sheheaved and labored in the swell.
"You are monstrously late!" a voice exclaimed, in English, and a darkfigure stood between them and the white tops of the nearer waves.
Kate's conductor grunted surlily, but made no audible reply. The manin whose arms she had travelled, as in bands of iron, now dismountedand began to swear at the speaker in strange, guttural, unintelligibleoaths.
"We are here to wait for my lord!" cried the man who had lifted Katefrom the saddle. He stood by her, still holding her arm securely.
His voice had a curious metallic ring in it, and an odd upwardintonation at the close of a sentence which remained in the memory.
"Indeed!" replied the voice which had first spoken; "then we, for ourpart, can stop neither for my lord nor any other lord in heaven or onearth. For Captain Smith of Poole has weighed his anchor, and waitsnow only the boat's return to run for Branksea, with the wind and thewhite horses at his tail. Nor is he the man to play pitch-and-toss outthere very long, even for his own long-boat and shipmates, with such aspanking blow astern of the _Sea Unicorn_."
"My lord will doubtless be here directly. His horse was at the door erewe left," again answered the metallic voice wi
th the quirk in the tailof it.
"We will e'en give him other ten minutes," quoth the sailor,imperturbably.
"THE MAN CARRIED HER EASILY THROUGH THE SURF"]
And he stood with his ship's watch in his hand, swinging his lanternup and down in answer to some signal from the ship, too faint forordinary eyes to catch across the whip and swirl of the uneasy waves.
But he was spared any long time of waiting; for a man in uniform rodeup, whose horse, even in the faint light, showed evident signs offatigue.
"You are to proceed on board at once with your charge. My lord hasbeen stricken down by an assassin. He lies in the palace of Amersfort,dangerously but not fatally hurt. Nevertheless, you are to carry outhis directions to the letter, and at the end of your journeying he orhis steward will meet you, and you shall receive the reward."
"That will not do for Captain Smith," cried the sailor, emphatically."He must have the doubloons in hand ere a soul of you quit the coast."
The man who had held Kate in his arms during her night-ride turnedsharply about.
"Quit your huxtering! I have it here!" cried he, indignantly, slappinghis pocket as he spoke.
"Run out the boat!" shouted the man, promptly, and half a dozen sailorssquattered mid-thigh in the foam and swelter of the sea.
"Now, on board with you this instant!" he cried, as one accustomed tocommand where boats and water were in question.
Then the man with the money took Kate again in his arms and carried hereasily through the surf to where the men held the leaping craft. Oneby one the dripping crew and passengers scrambled in, and presently,with four stout fellows bending at the long oars, the boat gathered waythrough the cold gray waves of the bar towards the masts of the shipwhich tossed and heaved in the offing.