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Read Ebook: Thomas Jefferson Brown by Curwood James Oliver
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Ebook has 83 lines and 7025 words, and 2 pages
"Do not be afraid, and hold to the edge of the canoe when it fills. The wind will carry us to Harrison's Island."
He turned to Lord Meton, and repeated the words; and just then the birchbark began to settle under them. With one hand gripping the side, Thomas Jefferson Brown leaped over the sea. Lower and lower settled the canoe with almost a scream, Lord Meton cried above the wind:
"Good Lord, it won't hold us up!"
For a few moments Thomas Jefferson relieved the canoe of his weight, and the bark rose again, slowly. Then, with a gasp, he clutched at the side again, and into Lady Isobel's drenched face, half hid the wet veil of her shining hair.
"The canoe won't hold us all up," he said trying to smile. "But it will hold two--you two and the wind is taking it to the island, four miles to the island, and I may be make it."
He knew that he never could make it; no man could swim so far in the chill waters of Hudson Bay; but he spoke as if his words were "I'm going to let go and try. Isobel, my love, will you kiss me?"
She threw one arm about his neck. Meton, clutching with frantic terror to the canoe saw nothing of what happened, nor did he hear the sobbing cry of Lady Isobel's heart as she kissed Thomas Jefferson Brown, once, and then three times, before he dropped back into the sea again.
"Good-by, sweetheart!" he said.
In the eyes that looked up at her, in his eyes in the one last look of love that he said, "Good-by." Lady Isobel saw the truth, and stretched out her arm to him.
"Stop! Come back! Take me with you!" she cried. "I want to go with you!"
And there, in the wildness of that sea, four miles from shore, Thomas Jefferson Brown seemed to heave himself up out of the water, as if the strength of a thousand swimmers had suddenly come to him. He let out a cry of triumph, of love, of joy; and he came back and gripped the canoe again, his gray eyes flashing, his face glowing with a strange flush.
"You want to go with me?" he said. "Come!"
He held up his arms, and with a cry that wasn't fear Lady Isobel went into them, while Thomas Jefferson Brown called to Lord Meton:
"Stick to the canoe! It will take you to the island!"
The shore was a low, dark streak, four miles away--an appalling distance away; but as she clung lightly to his shoulders, as Thomas Jefferson Brown told her to do, the horror and the fear of the big sea went out of Lady Isobel's brave little heart. She put her face down against his neck, pulled back his wet hair, and kissed him. God bless all such true hearts, wherever they be!
"We'll make it, Tom--we'll make it!" she told him a hundred times.
He felt the warm caresses of her lips, the thrilling love of her voice, and he knew that she was ready to die with him.
He swam in a strange way--a wonderfully strange way--did Thomas Jefferson Brown. He stood almost erect in the water, his head and shoulders clear; and now and then he stopped to rest, and it seemed no test for him at all to float with the weight of the woman he loved, his face turned up to her in those moments, her glorious blue eyes devouring him, her sweet lips kissing him--still kissing him.
He was doing a thing that she knew no other man in the world could do. She kept telling him so, while the land drew nearer and nearer, until at last she cried out in joy that she could see the little bushes along the shore.
"Another mile, Tom!" she said. "Only another mile, and then--"
"And then--" he said.
"And then--life!" she cried. "Life for you and me!"
He went on, seeming to grow stronger as the shore drew nearer. It was wonderful; but at last, when they came to the beach, he dropped down like a dead man. Lady Isobel caught his head to her dripping breast, and rocked him back and forth, sobbing a paean of love and pride, while far out she saw the canoe and Lord Meton drifting shoreward.
A few minutes later, Thomas Jefferson Brown went out into the sea again, until he was not much more than a speck, and brought in the canoe and Lord Meton, while Lady Isobel stood to her knees in the water, praising her God that from riches and splendor she had come out into a wilderness to find such a man as this.
After that, at York Factory, there was nothing left for Thomas Jefferson Brown to do but to reveal himself, and when Lord Meton discovered that there ran as good blood through his rescuer's veins as through his own, he gripped hands with the man who had saved him, and gave his congratulations cm the spot. But it made no difference to Isobel. If anything, she was a little disappointed.
Thomas Jefferson Brown arranged to go back with them on their yacht. The wedding would take place in London, a quiet affair. One day Isobel and her lover came along hand in hand, and Thomas Jefferson Brown said to me:
"Bobby, you're going to be best man."
"Not best man," Lady Isobel added, "but second best, Bobby. There's only one best man in the world!"
But I haven't been able to come to the point of this story yet--the remarkable part of it. Two weeks later, when we were up the river and our canoe struck a snag, I discovered that Thomas Jefferson Brown "couldn't swim a stroke!"
"Good Lord!" I said, but waited.
Back at the post, Thomas Jefferson Brown took me into his little room, and said:
Yes, what would be the use? For Thomas Jefferson Brown stepped out deliberately to go to his death, and found life. He's a hero and a man, is Thomas Jefferson Brown, even if fate did step in to make heroism a little easy for him at the time!
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