Fiction > Book editions > London, 1885 - Dynamiter

THE FAIR CUBA^^ 167
yard or two beyond tlie line of its passage, humble flower,
lofty tree, and the poor vulnerable maid who now knelt
to pay her gratitude to heaven, awoke unliarmed in the
crystal purity and peace of the new day.
To move by the path of the tornado was a thing
impossible to man, so wildly were the wrecks of the tall
forest piled together by that fugitive convulsion. I
crossed it indeed ; with such labour and patience, with
so many dangerous slips and falls, as left me, at the
further side, bankrupt alike of strength and courage.
Tliere I sat down awhile to recruit my forces ; and as I
ate (how should I bless the kindliness of Heaven !) my
eye, flitting to and fro in the colonnade of the great
trees, alighted on a trunk that had been blazed. Yes,
by the directing hand of Providence, I had been con-
ducted to the very track I was to follow. With what a
light heart, I now set forth, and walking with how glad
a step, traversed the uplands of the isle !
It was hard upon the hour of noon, when I came, all
tattered and wayworn, to the summit of a steep descent,
and looked below me on the sea. About all the coast,
the surf, roused by the tornado of the night, beat
with a particular fury and made a fringe of snow. Close
at my feet, I saw a haven, set in precipitous and palm-
crowned bluffs of rock. Just outside, a ship was hea^^ng
on the surge, so trimly sparred, so giossily painted, so
elegant and point-device in every feature, that my heart
was seized with admiration. The English colours blew
from her masthead ; and from my high station, I caught
glimpses of her snowy planking, as she rolled on the un-
even deep, and saw the sun glitter on the brass of her
deck furniture. There, then, was my ship of refuge ;
and of all my difficulties only one remained : to get on
board of her.
Half an hour later, I issued at last out of the woods
on the margin of a cove, into whose jaws the tossing and
blue billows entered, and along whose shores they l)roke
with a surprising loudness. A wooded promontory hid
the yacht ; and I had walked some distance round the
beach, in what appeared to be a virgin solitude, when