“No, we won’t wait to be taken off by the next packet. The river is rising, and the sand-bar might be covered. We demand it,--the passengers _demand_ to be set ashore in the yawl.”
“Well, then, we will hold you and the owners liable.”
“We are not prisoners. What’s that? Responsibility? humanity?--shelter? I’ll take care of the shelter. Duciehurst mansion is scarcely ten miles down the river. I own it, and the yawl could put us in it in a trice.”
“Yes,--we will risk it,--we will risk the wind and the current. _All_ right. All _right_.”
He had carried his point against every protest according to his wont. As he turned, triumphant and smiling, to the anxious, disheveled, drenched group, he had all the pomp and port of a public benefactor. Absorbed in himself and the prospect of his speedy extrication from this uncomfortable and dangerous plight he was utterly unaware that his wife and only child had had urgent need of the succor that they had received from a stranger.
Paula gazed enlightened at Floyd-Rosney as if she saw him for the first time as he was. The scales had fallen from her eyes. His glance met hers. He had no sense of gratulation that she and the boy were safe. He had not known they had encountered special danger. He thought they only shared the general menace which it was his privilege to render less, to annul. He objected to her pose with the boy in her arms. He deemed it inelegant,--as little Ned was much too stalwart for the artistic presentment of the babe in the bosom of graceful maternity,--and the backward cant of her figure thus extremely plebeian. It was not this personal disapproval, however, that informed the coldness in his eyes. The incident of the ridicule to which she had subjected him among these passengers still rankled in every pulsation. He was glad of the opportunity to confer benefits upon them, from his high position to rescue them from imminent danger, to be reinstated, in their opinion, as a man of paramount influence and value,--a fleer at him should be esteemed, indeed, a self-confessed folly.
“I dare say the old house leaks like a riddle,--I know it is in ruins,” he said, in a large, off-hand, liberal manner, “but it is on solid ground, at any rate, and I shall be glad to entertain this worshipful company there as best I may till we can get a boat that can navigate water and not tow-heads. I know we can’t spend the night here. In fact, the Captain proposes to set us ashore as soon as he is convinced that no boat is coming down,--but, of course, every craft on the river is tied up in such weather as this. If he will set us ashore at Duciehurst with some bedding and provisions I will ask no more.”