Read Online Fog Magic by Julia L. Sauer - Free Book Online Page B

been struck down with the fever. That would have started the panic all over again. She’s quiet enough now,” he added. “She’s a broken-hearted woman, and sort of dazed from all she’s been through. But she’s clear enough in her mind. And she wants to bury the Cap’n in her family’s plot rather than where his folks lie. Ru pert, Burpee, and the rest of us here have agreed to let her. There’s no danger now after the months the longboat’s been tossing in the tropic sun. But we’ll send someone down the shore to ask Dr. Ingraham for certain so the womenfolk won’t fret about the children.”
    There was no unwillingness, only murmurs of sympathy. The men broke up into groups to discuss it and make plans.
    â€œLike as not Laleah Cornwall will feel more comfortable in her own home,” one said. “I’ll go tell the womenfolk. My wife and some of the others can get her house open and aired out before Laleah comes ashore.”
    â€œMy wife’ll be glad to help,” said another. “A house that’s been closed for over a year is a gloomy place to come back to.”
    Mr. Morehouse gave directions. Young men were dispatched to row up the shore to Middle Harbour to carry the news of the Emmeretta’s homecoming. Others were sent down shore to tell the minister; and to ask if Doctor Ingraham thought it safe to bury a victim of yellow fever ashore.
    Only Greta could be quite sure of the answer they would bring back. Suddenly it had come to her why the names of the captain and his wife were so familiar. Over the mountain, in her own village cemetery, among the oldest headstones, were two that bore the names Captain Ansel Cornwall and Laleah Cornwall, Widow of Captain Ansel Cornwall.
    Retha and Greta trouped slowly back along the beach with the others. No one had heart to go back to work. Only from one small building on the shore came familiar sounds. The carpenter was already hard at work sawing up his best lumber. He was building a coffin for Captain Ansel Cornwall. When you build a vessel to go out to meet the sea, you put into it only the finest timber and the finest workmanship; the vessel must match the integrity of the men who sail it. Surely this last little barque, destined to withstand not the sea but the soil, must be fashioned with the same integrity. The helpless body sewn in sailcloth and lying out there in the longboat in the fog had come half around the world to rest in its native soil. It must have the finest coffin the carpenter could build.
    As they listened to the pounding, the older men were all thinking of the gay Cornwall wedding and that honeymoon to foreign lands. Laleah Cornwall had been proud and headstrong. Yes, and vain, too, the women always said. Only a vain woman would relish sending her lover off to sea again and again as she had done for the pleasure of seeing him come back faithfully at the end of each voyage. They wondered if it was regret for all the lost years that had driven the bride to such frenzied courage that she had dared to defy the crew and bring the Captain home. Well, she was a young woman still. There would be many years to regret the folly of her youth.
    But Greta knew better. Only she, in all Blue Cove, knew that on the tombstone in the cemetery the dates showed that Laleah Cornwall had survived her husband by less than a year.
    The next day in Little Valley was as foggy as the one before had been. Tollerton foghorn had not stopped its steady warning blasts once during the night. It was Sunday, too, and it should be the day of Captain Cornwall’s funeral.
    All during the morning Greta could not keep her mind from the drama going on over the mountain. She wanted, yet hesitated to go. Perhaps when she got there it would not be the “next” day in Blue Cove at all; perhaps there would be no reference whatever to the Emmeretta’s homecoming. But she had to find out.
    â€œI don’t like