"Dear Father! What if it's a ship, and there's no land for miles?"
McEvoy offered an alternative hypothesis. "Belike the wind hath swung round a bit to the northwest. We may have to hike a few miles up the shore."
"There's e'en a happier possibility," Ebenezer said. "I scarce dare hope — But stay! Do you hear a sound?"
They paused in their work to listen and were nearly taken under by the next wave.
"Aye, 'tis a surf!" Ebenezer cried joyously. "Neither we nor the light have changed course; 'tis that we're almost upon it!" What he wanted to explain was that though from the island they had steered as directly for the light as they were able, their actual course was somewhat to the south of it; from four or five miles distance the error (perhaps a few hundred feet) had been too small to notice, but as they drew very near, the angle between their course and the light tended to increase towards ninety degrees. Before he could elaborate, however, a wave greater than usual tossed the stern high and to larboard and lifted the oar from its tholes.
"She's broaching to!" he warned.
The others paddled to no purpose with their shingles. Ebenezer slammed the oar back between the pins and attempted to bring the stern into the seas by putting the "tiller" end hard over to larboard, as he had grown used to doing under sternway. But his action was out of phase, for the crest had passed and left the dinghy momentarily wayless in the trough: the motion of the oar was in fact a sculling stroke, and had the effect of bringing the stern even farther around. The next wave struck them fair on the starboard quarter, broached them to, and filled the boat ankle deep with water; the one after that, a white-capped five-footer, took them square abeam, and they were flailing once more in the icy Chesapeake. This time, however, their ordeal was brief: their feet struck seaweed and mud at once, and they found themselves less than a dozen yards from shore. They scrambled in, knocked down time and again by the hip-high breakers, and gained the beach at last, scarcely able to stand.
"We must make haste!" McEvoy gasped. "We may freeze yet!"
As fast as they could manage, stumbling and panting, they moved up the shore towards their beacon, now plainly recognizable as the lighted windows of a good-sized house. Not far from it, where the beach met the lawn of the house, stood a tall loblolly pine, at the foot of which they saw a conspicuous white object, like a large vertical stone. Ebenezer's hackles tingled. "Ah God!" he cried and summoned the last of his strength to sprint forward and embrace the grave. The feeble moon sufficed to show the inscription:
Anne Bowyer Cooke
b. 1645 d. 1666
Thus Far Hath the Lord
Helped Us.
The others came up behind. "What is it?"
Ebenezer would not turn his head. "My journey's done," he wept. "I have come full circle. Yonder's Malden; go and save yourselves."
Astonished, they read the gravestone, and when entreaty proved vain, they lifted Ebenezer by main strength from the grave. Once upon his feet, he offered them no resistance, but the last of his spirit seemed gone.
"Had I ne'er been brought to birth," he said, pointing to the stone, "that woman were alive today, and my sister with her, and my father a gentleman sot-weed planter, and the three of them happy in yonder house."
Bertrand was too near freezing to offer a reply, if he had any, but McEvoy — who likewise shook from head to foot with cold — led the poet off by the arm and said, "Go to, 'tis like the sin o' Father Adam, that we all have on our heads; we ne'er asked for't, but there it is, and do we choose to live, why, we must needs live with't."
Ebenezer had been used to seeing Malden a-bustle with deplorable activity after dark, but now only the parlor appeared to be occupied; the rest of the house, as well as the grounds and outbuildings — he peered with awful shame in the direction of the curing-house — was dark and quiet. As they went up the empty lawn toward the front door, which faced south-westwards to the grave and the Bay beyond, McEvoy, as much to warm himself, no doubt, as to comfort Ebenezer, went on to declare through chattering teeth that the single light was a good sign: without question it meant that Andrew Cooke had put his house in order and was waiting with his daughter-in-law for news of his prodigal son. He would be overjoyed to see them; they would be clothed and fed, and alarms would be dispatched at once to Anne Arundel Town to intercept Long Ben Avery.
"Stay." Ebenezer shook his head. "Such fables hurt too much beside the truth."
McEvoy released his arm angrily. "Still the virgin," he cried, "with no thought for any wight's loss save his own! Run down and die on yonder grave!"
Ebenezer shook his head: he wanted to explain to his injured companion that he suffered not from his loss alone, but from McEvoy's as well, and Anna's, and Andrew's, and even Bertrand's — from the general condition of things, in sum, for which he saw himself answerable — and that the pain of loss, however great, was as nothing beside the pain of responsibility for it. The fallen suffer from Adam's fall, he wanted to explain; but in that knowledge — which the Fall itself vouchsafed him — how more must Adam have suffered! But he was too gripped by cold and despair to essay such philosophy.
They reached the house.
"We'd best have a look through the window ere we knock," Bertrand said. "I'Christ, what will Master Andrew say to me, that was sent to be your adviser!"
They went to the lighted window of the parlor, from which they heard the sounds of masculine laughter and conversation.
McEvoy got there first. "Some men at cards," he reported, and then a look of sudden pain came into his face. "Dear God! Can that be poor Joan?"
Bertrand hastened up beside him. "Aye, that's the swine-maid, and yonder's Master Andrew in the periwig, but — "
Now he too showed great distress. "God's blood and body, Master Eben! Tis Colonel Robotham!"
But Ebenezer was at the window sill by this time, and beheld for himself these wonders and others by far more marvelous. Joan Toast, so beridden and devoured by her afflictions that she looked a leprous Bedlamite, was hobbling with a pitcher of ale towards a green baize table in the center of the parlor, about whose circumference five gentlemen sat at cards: the lawyer, physician, and minister of the gospel Richard Sowter, who sucked on his pipe and called upon various saints to witness the wretched hand he was being dealt; the cooper (and dealer) William Smith, who smiled grandly at the table and with his pipestem directed Joan to fill Andrew Cooke's glass; Bertrand's portly, sanguine father-in-law from Talbot County, Colonel George Robotham, who seemed preoccupied with something quite other than lanterloo; Andrew Cooke himself, grown thinner and older-looking since Ebenezer had seen him last, but more sharp-eyed than ever, grasping his cards in his good left hand and glancing like an old eagle at the others, as if they were not his adversaries but his prey; and finally, most appalling of all, at Andrew's withered right arm, joking as merrily over his cards as if he were back in Locket's — Henry Burlingame, still in the character he called Nicholas Lowe of Talbot!
"Very well, gentlemen," the cooper declared, having dealt four hands. "I share the fortunes of Mr. Sowter, I believe."
"Put it the other way about," Burlingame remarked, "and there'll be more truth than poetry in't when we get to court."
Sowter shook his head in mock despair. "St. Dominic's sparrow, neighbors! If our case were half as feeble as this miscarriage, we'd get no farther than the courthouse jakes with't, I swear!"