The Blithedale Romance - Page 161/170

Once, twice, thrice, I paddled the boat upstream, and again suffered it

to glide, with the river's slow, funereal motion, downward. Silas

Foster had raked up a large mass of stuff, which, as it came towards

the surface, looked somewhat like a flowing garment, but proved to be a

monstrous tuft of water-weeds. Hollingsworth, with a gigantic effort,

upheaved a sunken log. When once free of the bottom, it rose partly

out of water,--all weedy and slimy, a devilish-looking object, which

the moon had not shone upon for half a hundred years,--then plunged

again, and sullenly returned to its old resting-place, for the remnant

of the century.

"That looked ugly!" quoth Silas. "I half thought it was the Evil One,

on the same errand as ourselves,--searching for Zenobia."

"He shall never get her," said I, giving the boat a strong impulse.

"That's not for you to say, my boy," retorted the yeoman. "Pray God he

never has, and never may. Slow work this, however! I should really be

glad to find something! Pshaw! What a notion that is, when the only

good luck would be to paddle, and drift, and poke, and grope,

hereabouts, till morning, and have our labor for our pains! For my

part, I shouldn't wonder if the creature had only lost her shoe in the

mud, and saved her soul alive, after all. My stars! how she will laugh

at us, to-morrow morning!"

It is indescribable what an image of Zenobia--at the breakfast-table,

full of warm and mirthful life--this surmise of Silas Foster's brought

before my mind. The terrible phantasm of her death was thrown by it

into the remotest and dimmest background, where it seemed to grow as

improbable as a myth.

"Yes, Silas, it may be as you say," cried I. The drift of the stream

had again borne us a little below the stump, when I felt--yes, felt,

for it was as if the iron hook had smote my breast--felt

Hollingsworth's pole strike some object at the bottom of the river!

He started up, and almost overset the boat.

"Hold on!" cried Foster; "you have her!"

Putting a fury of strength into the effort, Hollingsworth heaved amain,

and up came a white swash to the surface of the river. It was the flow

of a woman's garments. A little higher, and we saw her dark hair

streaming down the current. Black River of Death, thou hadst yielded

up thy victim! Zenobia was found!

Silas Foster laid hold of the body; Hollingsworth likewise grappled

with it; and I steered towards the bank, gazing all the while at

Zenobia, whose limbs were swaying in the current close at the boat's

side. Arriving near the shore, we all three stept into the water, bore

her out, and laid her on the ground beneath a tree.