Sally Dows
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her little domain in order against the coming gale.She drove the cows to the rude shed among the scrub oaks, she collectedthe goats and young kids in the corral, and replenished the stock offuel from the woodpile. She was quite hidden in the shrubbery when shesaw a boat making slow headway against the wind towards the little covewhere but a moment before she had drawn up the dingey beyond the reachof breaking seas. It was a whaleboat from Saucelito containing a fewmen. As they neared the landing she recognized in the man who seemed tobe directing the boat the second friend of Colonel Marion--the man whohad come with the Secretary to take him off, but whom she had neverseen again. In her present horror of that memory she remained hidden,determined at all hazards to avoid a meeting. When they had landed,one of the men halted accidentally before the shrubbery where she wasconcealed as he caught his first view of the cottage, which had beeninvisible from the point they had rounded.
"Look here, Bragg," he said, turning to Marion's friend, in a voicewhich was distinctly audible to Mrs. Bunker. "What are we to say tothese people?"
"There's only one," returned the other. "The man's at sea. His wife'shere. She's all right."
"You said she was one of us?"
"After a fashion. She's the woman who helped Marion when he was here. Ireckon he made it square with her from the beginning, for she forwardedletters from him since. But you can tell her as much or as little as youfind necessary when you see her."
"Yes, but we must settle that NOW," said Bragg sharply, "and I proposeto tell her NOTHING. I'm against having any more petticoats mixed upwith our affairs. I propose to make an examination of the place withoutbothering our heads about her."
"But we must give some reason for coming here, and we must ask her tokeep dark, or we'll have her blabbing to the first person she meets,"urged the other.
"She's not likely to see anybody before night, when the brig will be inand the men and guns landed. Move on, and let Jim take soundings offthe cove, while I look along the shore. It's just as well that there'sa house here, and a little cover like this"--pointing to theshrubbery--"to keep the men from making too much of a show until afterthe earthworks are up. There are sharp eyes over at the Fort."
"There don't seem to be any one in the house now," returned the otherafter a moment's scrutiny of the cottage, "or the woman would surelycome out at the barking of the dog, even if she hadn't seen us. Likelyshe's gone to Saucelito."
"So much the better. Just as well that she should know nothing untilit happens. Afterwards we'll settle with the husband for the price ofpossession; he has only a squatter's rights. Come along; we'll havebad weather before we get back round the Point again, but so much thebetter, for it will keep off any inquisitive longshore cruisers."
They moved away. But Mrs. Bunker, stung through her benumbed andbrooding consciousness, and made desperate by this repeated revelationof her former weakness, had heard enough to make her feverish to hearmore. She knew the intricacies of the shrubbery thoroughly. She knewevery foot of shade and cover of the clearing, and creeping like a catfrom bush to bush she managed, without being discovered, to keepthe party in sight and hearing all the time. It required no greatdiscernment, even for an inexperienced woman like herself, at the end ofan hour, to gather their real purpose. It was to prepare for the secretlanding of an armed force, disguised as laborers, who, under the outwardshow of quarrying in the bluff, were to throw up breastworks, andfortify the craggy shelf. The landing was fixed for that night, and wasto be effected by a vessel now cruising outside the Heads.
She understood it all now. She remembered Marion's speech about theimportance of the bluff for military purposes; she remembered the visitof the officers from the Fort opposite. The strangers were stealing amarch upon the Government, and by night would be in possession. It wasperhaps an evidence of her newly awakened and larger comprehension thatshe took no thought of her loss of home and property,--perhaps there waslittle to draw her to it now,--but was conscious only of a more terriblecatastrophe--a catastrophe to which she was partly accessory, ofwhich any other woman would have warned her husband--or at least thoseofficers of the Fort whose business it was to--Ah, yes! the officers ofthe Fort--only just opposite to her! She trembled, and yet flushed withan inspiration. It was not too late yet--why not warn them NOW?
But how? A message sent by Saucelito and the steamboat to SanFrancisco--the usual way--would not reach them tonight. To go herself,rowing directly across in the dingey, would be the only security ofsuccess. If she could do it? It was a long pull--the sea was gettingup--but she would try.
She waited until the last man had stepped into the boat, in nervousdread of some one remaining. Then, when the boat had vanished roundthe Point again, she ran back to the cottage, arrayed herself in herhusband's pilot coat, hat, and boots, and launched the dingey. It was aheavy, slow, but luckily a stanch and seaworthy boat. It was not untilshe was well off shore that she began to feel the full fury of the windand waves, and knew the difficulty and danger of her undertaking. Shehad decided that her shortest and most direct course was within a fewpoints of the wind, but the quartering of the waves on the broad bluffbows of the boat tended to throw it to leeward, a movement that, whileit retarded her forward progress, no doubt saved the little craft fromswamping. Again, the feebleness and shortness of her stroke, which neverimpelled her through a rising wave, but rather lifted her half way upits face, prevented the boat from taking much water, while her steadfastgaze, fixed only on the slowly retreating shore, kept her steering freefrom any fatal nervous vacillation, which the sight of the threateningseas on her bow might have produced. Preserved through her veryweakness, ignorance, and simplicity of purpose, the dingey had allthe security of a drifting boat, yet retained a certain gentle butpersistent guidance. In this feminine fashion she made enough headwayto carry her abreast of the Point, where she met the reflux currentsweeping round it that carried her well along into the channel, nowsluggish with the turn of the tide. After half an hour's pulling, shewas delighted to find herself again in a reverse current, abreast of hercottage, but steadily increasing her distance from it. She was, in fact,on the extreme outer edge of a vast whirlpool formed by the force of thegale on a curving lee shore, and was being carried to her destination ina semicircle around that bay which she never could have crossed. She wasmoving now in a line with the shore and the Fort, whose flagstaff, aboveits green, square, and white quarters, she could see distinctly, andwhose lower water battery and landing seemed to stretch out from therocks scarcely a mile ahead. Protected by the shore from the fury of thewind, and even of the sea, her progress was also steadily acceleratedby the velocity of the current, mingling with the ebbing tide. A suddenfear seized her. She turned the boat's head towards the shore, but itwas swept quickly round again; she redoubled her exertions, tuggingfrantically at her helpless oars. She only succeeded in getting theboat into the trough of the sea, where, after a lurch that threatened tocapsize it, it providentially swung around on its short keel and beganto drift stern on. She was almost abreast of the battery now; she couldhear the fitful notes of a bugle that seemed blown and scattered aboveher head; she even thought she could see some men in blue uniformsmoving along the little pier. She was passing it; another fruitlesseffort to regain her ground, but she was swept along steadily towardsthe Gate, the whitening bar, and the open sea.
She knew now what it all meant. This was what she had come for; thiswas the end! Beyond, only a little beyond, just a few moments longer towait, and then, out there among the breakers was the rest that she hadlonged for but had not dared to seek. It was not her fault; they couldnot blame HER. He would come back and never know what had happened--noreven know how she had tried to atone for her deceit. And he would findhis house in possession of--of--those devils! No! No! she must not dieyet, at least not until she had warned the Fort. She seized the oarsagain with frenzied strength; the boat had stopped under the unwontedstrain, staggered, tried to rise in an uplifted sea, took part of itover her bow, struck down Mrs. Bunker under half a ton of
blue waterthat wrested the oars from her paralyzed hands like playthings, sweptthem over the gunwale, and left her lying senseless in the bottom of theboat.
*****
"Hold har-rd--or you'll run her down."
"Now then, Riley,--look alive,--is it slapin' ye are!"
"Hold yer jaw, Flanigan, and stand ready with the boat-hook. Now then,hold har-rd!"
The sudden jarring and tilting of the water-logged boat, a sound ofrasping timbers, the swarming of men in shirtsleeves and blue trousersaround her, seemed to rouse her momentarily, but she again fainted away.
When she struggled back to consciousness once more she was wrapped in asoldier's jacket, her head pillowed on the shirt-sleeve of an artillerycorporal in the