The moon, that night, though past the full, was still large and oval, and having risen between eight and nine o'clock, now shone aslantwise over the river, throwing the high, opposite bank, with its woods, into deep shadow, but lighting up the hither shore pretty effectually.Not a ray appeared to fall on the river itself.It lapsed imperceptibly away, a broad, black, inscrutable depth, keeping its own secrets from the eye of man, as impenetrably as mid-ocean could.
"Well, Miles Coverdale," said Foster, "you are the helmsman.How do you mean to manage this business?""I shall let the boat drift, broadside foremost, past that stump," Ireplied."I know the bottom, having sounded it in fishing.The shore, on this side, after the first step or two, goes off very abruptly; and there is a pool, just by the stump, twelve or fifteen feet deep.The current could not have force enough to sweep any sunken object, even if partially buoyant, out of that hollow.""Come, then," said Silas; "but I doubt whether I can touch bottom with this hay-rake, if it's as deep as you say.Mr.Hollingsworth, I think you'll be the lucky man to-night, such luck as it is."We floated past the stump.Silas Foster plied his rake manfully, poking it as far as he could into the water, and immersing the whole length of his arm besides.Hollingsworth at first sat motionless, with the hooked pole elevated in the air.But, by and by, with a nervous and jerky movement, he began to plunge it into the blackness that upbore us, setting his teeth, and making precisely such thrusts, methought, as if he were stabbing at a deadly enemy.I bent over the side of the boat.So obscure, however, so awfully mysterious, was that dark stream, that--and the thought made me shiver like a leaf--I might as well have tried to look into the enigma of the eternal world, to discover what had become of Zenobia's soul, as into the river's depths, to find her body.And there, perhaps, she lay, with her face upward, while the shadow of the boat, and my own pale face peering downward, passed slowly betwixt her and the sky!
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.
