I
hailed them, and when we were alongside held up the brooch from
my hat, then pointed to the purple fruit. The exchange was soon
made; they sped away, and I placed the mulberries upon the thwart
beside her.
"I am not hungry," she said coldly. "Take them away."
I bit my lip, and returned to my place at the tiller. This rose was set
with thorns, and already I felt their sting. Presently she leaned back
in the nest I had made for her. "I wish to sleep," she said haughtily,
and, turning her face from me, pillowed her head upon her arms.
I sat, bent forward, the tiller in my hand, and stared at my wife in
some consternation. This was not the tame pigeon, the rosy,
humble, domestic creature who was to make me a home and rear
me children. A sea bird with broad white wings swooped down
upon the water, now dark and ridged, rested there a moment, then
swept away into the heart of the gathering storm. She was liker
such an one. Such birds were caught at times, but never tamed and
never kept.
The lightning, which had played incessantly in pale flashes across
the low clouds in the south, now leaped to higher peaks and
became more vivid, and the muttering of the thunder changed to
long, booming peals. Thirteen years before, the Virginia storms
had struck us with terror. Compared with those of the Old World
we had left, they were as cannon to the whistling of arrows, as
breakers on an iron coast to the dull wash of level seas.
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