Lusty Wind for Carolina

Philadelphia: The Blakiston Company, 1944. Reprint. Hard Cover. Good/No Jacket. 8x5x1. Reprint. No jacket. Boards soiled and rubbed, pencil name on front free endpaper. 1944 Hard Cover. 470 pp. The journey from New Providence to the Cape Fear was a matter of weeks. Becalmed for days, followed by contrary winds, they made slow progress up the Florida coast, keeping well out to avoid Spanish ships of war. Between Charles Town, on the Ashley, and the shoals that marked the tortuous entrance to Cape Fear River, they ran into the fringe of a hurricane, which blew them back almost to the Charles Town harbour. Then one morning at sunrise, Mister Bragg manoeuvred the Delicia over Frying Pan Shoals into the channel. The faint light of soft dawn lined the eastern horizon when Gabrielle awoke on that long-dreamed-of morning as the Delicia entered the river and found safe harbour behind the shoals and the protecting Banks. She got up quietly from the little cot behind the screen in her mother's cabin, where she had slept since the ship sailed from Nassau. She dressed hurriedly in the dark, moving softly so that she would not disturb her mother. Even though she did not waken, she would be restless and talk in her sleep of her old home in France. Celestine, sleeping on the floor on a pallet at the side of Madam Fountaine's berth, snored intermittently, her mouth half open in her full moon-face. Gabrielle closed the cabin door and made her way up the companionway to the deck. She was eager to have her first glimpse of the river and the land at sunrise. She wanted to see the sun bring the river banks out of the deep shadows and flood the river with daylight. There was a portent in seeing a new land at sunrise. Early as it was, there were others before her—dark shadows at the rail, facing shoreward, trying to pierce the gloom, waiting for the massed shadows to dissolve under the first light of the new day. A crimson glow through the dark sky marked the horizon. In a moment the sun would rise and she would see what her inner eye had long envisaged; the new world of the Carolinas. The sound of myriad song birds came from the near-by shore. But there was no vibrant cock's crow to mark a civilized world, only the song of the forest and wild places. The muffled sound of voices and the creaking of the anchor chain sounded far away. She peered down the deck, only to find her vision blunted by a grey mist. She realized then that a low-flying fog shrouded the river and the shore. She felt a vague unrest, the weight of disappointment. She had always had the vision of a sun-drenched shore line, pointing the way to the forest. Fog belonged to the old world of sorrow. She must have spoken aloud in her disappointment, for a figure detached itself from the shadows and stepped to her side. From the height and carriage she recognized Roger Mainwairing.--Good Reads