that boat, and with the favoring tide dropped down
the rapid river where the swift current is so strong that oars are
scarcely needed, except to keep the boat steady. Truly all nature
seemed to play into his hands; this first relenting night of earliest
spring favored him with its stillness, the tide was fair, the wind
was fair, the little moon gave him just enough light, without
betraying him to any curious eyes, as he glided down the three miles
between the river banks, in haste to reach the sea. Doubtless the
light west wind played about him as delicately as if he had been the
most human of God's creatures; nothing breathed remonstrance in his
ear, nothing whispered in the whispering water that rippled about his
inexorable keel, steering straight for the Shoals through the quiet
darkness. The snow lay thick and white upon the land in the moonlight;
lamps twinkled here and there from dwellings on either side; in Eliot
and Newcastle, in Portsmouth and Kittery, roofs, chimneys, and gables
showed faintly in the vague light; the leafless trees clustered dark
in hollows or lifted their tracery of bare boughs in higher spaces
against the wintry sky. His eyes must have looked on it all, whether
he saw the peaceful picture or not. Beneath many a humble roof honest
folk were settling into their untroubled rest, as "this planned piece
of deliberate wickedness" was stealing silently by with his heart full
of darkness, blacker than the black tide that swirled beneath his boat
and bore him fiercely on. At the river's mouth stood the sentinel
light-houses, sending their great spokes of light afar into the night,
like the arms of a wide humanity stretching into the darkness helping
hands to bring all who needed succor safely home. He passed them,
first the tower at Fort Point, then the taller one at Whale's Back,
steadfastly holding aloft their warning fires. There was no signal
from the warning bell as he rowed by, though a danger more subtle,
more deadly, than fog, or hurricane, or pelting storm was passing
swift beneath it. Unchallenged by anything in earth or heaven, he kept
on his way and gained the great outer ocean, doubtless pulling strong
and steadily, for he had no time to lose, and the longest night was
all too short for an undertaking such as this. Nine miles from the
light-houses to the islands! Slowly he makes his way; it seems to take
an eternity of time. And now he is midway between the islands and the
coast. That li