Gene turned away and took up his cap. “Very well, Muriel,” he said. “I promised to mind every command, and if this is one of them, I’ll go tomorrow.” Captain Ezra secretly rejoiced when he heard that the lad was soon to depart. It was hard for him to share his “gal.” He liked Gene, to be sure, better than he did any boy he had ever known. In fact, he hadn’t supposed “city folk” could be so genuine; willing to clean fish or turn a hand to anything however commonplace. To be sure Doctor Winslow might be called “city folks,” for he had spent most of his time in New York for nearly thirty years, but when all was said, he was really a native of Tunkett.
Muriel tried to laugh and chatter during the meal that followed, but Gene found it hard to do so. He was still feeling rebellious. He was so sure Marianne Carnot had hurt his “storm maiden.”
“She should have remained in Europe if she does not approve of American democracy,” his indignant thought was declaring. “But in Muriel she has met her superior,” another thought championed, adding: “I hope the future will prove it and humiliate her snobbishness.”
After Gene’s departure the delayed blizzard arrived with unusual fury. The mountainous waves crashed against the rocks as though determined to undermine the light, high on the cliff above them; but when each fuming, frothing wave had receded the tower, strong and unshaken, stood in the midst of driving hail and wet snow, but its efforts to shine were of little avail, for its great lamp could merely cast a halo of glow and a small circle of light out into the storm.
Woe to the mariners, if any there were, who went too near the Outer Ledge while the blizzard raged.
“Rilly gal, I cal’late yer city friend got away jest in time,” Captain Ezra said on the third day of the blizzard, which had continued with unabated fury. “It’d be tarnal risky navigatin’ tryin’ to cruise him over to Tunkett today, which was when he cal’lated leavin’, wa’n’t it, fust mate?”
The old sea captain sat by the stove, smoking. It was warm and cheerful in the kitchen, but with each fresh blast of wind the house shook, while the very island itself seemed to tremble now and then as an unusually large wave crashed over it on the seaward side.