Crab Reef/Chapter 7
VIII.
The sun was above the sea's edge, and Griffon had fallen at last into uneasy sleep, when the occupants of the upper cave heard Sailor Penny's shrill signal from the watery cavern below. Griffon awoke and sprang to his feet. The windlass was manned, the stone hatch was raised.
Henry was the first to rise from the depths. He grinned around him, but there was a grayness in his black skin and a wild light of relief in his eyes. Without a word, he cast the hook clear of the ring in the stone and lowered it clown the hole. He sent the Turtle back to the windlass with a wave of the hand.
"Hoist away!" rang the voice of Penny from the depths.
The windlass creaked and Henry steadied the ascending rope with his hands, leaning out over the open hatch. A package wrapped in wet sailcloth and strongly roped about came into view, topped the level of the floor and was dragged aside by Henry. It was small, but it was heavier than lead. Again the rope was lowered down the hatch to the unseen boat, and again came Sailor Penny's cry of "Hoist away!" Once more Henry leaned over and steadied the ascending rope with both hands.
This was a very different load from the first. This was no inanimate package done up in wet sailcloth, but a young woman seated in a bight of rope. As she stepped upon the floor of the cave Peter Griffon cried out in a voice of incredulous joy, whereupon she ran to him and was clasped tight in his arms.
Then came Sailor Penny himself up from the weltering black depths by way of the sea ladder of rope and ratlines, bearing on his right shoulder an oblong box of red wood studded and banded with tarnished silver. He beamed at the assembled company. Only Griffon and the young woman did not see him, or if they saw him. did not heed him. He stepped over to them, close to them, still holding the ornate box on his shoulder.
"Lad, ye've got yer Sally at last," he said. "An' no Stave trash neither. I larned the truth of it all last night. Who d'ye reckon ye be huggin' an' kissin', lad?"
"She's Sally! I don't care who else she is—what she is!" cried Griffon.
"She's the daughter o' my dead son," retorted the old man, with dignity. "A Penny; honest old Berkshire yeoman stock: no dirty Stave trash; a Penny o' Pennyfold!"
The lovers paid no attention to him. The old man turned to the others, who observed him with round and devoted eyes. He lowered the box from his shoulder to the crook of his left arm.
"High gentility," he said, with a wag of his head toward Griffon. "I was born an' raised on Griffon land. An' she'll be the lady o' Danes's Ride an' High Hall." He patted the box significantly. "The glass be turned, lads. The black crabs be fed. There'll be a good ship layin' off here any day now, to carry us home. The wheel sags round."