"Yes--if they want me."
"Do not they love you?"
"I don't know."
"I shall be thirteen at Christmas," said the girl.
Then they began to talk about the sea, and the people on board around
them. They remained near each other all day, exchanging a few words now
and then. The passengers thought them brother and sister. The girl
knitted at a stocking, the boy meditated, the sea continued to grow
rougher. At night, as they parted to go to bed, the girl said to Mario,
"Sleep well."
"No one will sleep well, my poor children!" exclaimed the Italian sailor
as he ran past, in answer to a call from the captain. The boy was on the
point of replying with a "good night" to his little friend, when an
unexpected dash of water dealt him a violent blow, and flung him against
a seat.
"My dear, you are bleeding!" cried the girl, flinging herself upon him.
The passengers who were making their escape below, paid no heed to them.
The child knelt down beside Mario, who had been stunned by the blow,
wiped the blood from his brow, and pulling the red kerchief from her
hair, she bound it about his head, then pressed his head to her breast
in order to knot the ends, and thus received a spot of blood on her
yellow bodice just above the girdle. Mario shook himself and rose:
"Are you better?" asked the girl.
"I no longer feel it," he replied.
"Sleep well," said Giulietta.
"Good night," responded Mario. And they descended two neighboring sets
of steps to their dormitories.
The sailor's prediction proved correct. Before they could get to sleep,
a frightful tempest had broken loose. It was like the sudden onslaught
of furious great horses, which in the course of a few minutes split one
mast, and carried away three boats which were suspended to the falls,
and four cows on the bow, like leaves. On board the steamer there arose
a confusion, a terror, an uproar, a tempest of shrieks, wails, and
prayers, sufficient to make the hair stand on end. The tempest continued
to increase in fury all night. At daybreak it was still increasing. The
formidable waves dashing the craft transversely, broke over the deck,
and smashed, split, and hurled everything into the sea. The platform
which screened the engine was destroyed, and the water dashed in with a
terrible roar; the fires were extinguished; the engineers fled; huge and
impetuous streams forced their way everywhere. A voice of thunder
shouted:
"To the pumps!" It was the captain's voice. The sailors rushed to the
pumps. But a sudden burst of the sea, striking the vessel on the stern,
demolished bulwarks and hatchways, and sent a flood within.
All the passengers, more dead than alive, had taken refuge in the grand
saloon. At last the captain made his appearance.
"Captain! Captain!" they all shrieked in concert. "What is taking place?
Where are we? Is there any hope! Save us!"
The captain waited until they were silent, then said coolly; "Let us be
resigned."
One woman uttered a cry of "Mercy!" No one else could give vent to a
sound. Terror had frozen them all. A long time passed thus, in a silence
like that of the grave. All gazed at each other with blanched faces. The
sea continued to rage and roar. The vessel pitched heavily. At one
moment the captain attempted to launch one life-boat; five sailors
entered it; the boat sank; the waves turned it over, and two of the
sailors were drowned, among them the Italian: the others contrived with
difficulty to catch hold of the ropes and draw themselves up again.
After this, the sailors themselves lost all courage. Two hours later,
the vessel was sunk in the water to the height of the port-holes.
A terrible spectacle was presented meanwhile on the deck. Mothers
pressed their children to their breasts in despair; friends exchanged
embraces and bade each other farewell; some went down into the cabins
that they might die without seeing the sea. One passenger shot himself
in the head with a pistol, and fell headlong down the stairs to the
cabin, where he expired. Many clung frantically to each other; women
writhed in horrible convulsions. There was audible a chorus of sobs, of
infantile laments, of strange and piercing voices; and here and there
persons were visible motionless as statues, in stupor, with eyes dilated
and sightless,--faces of corpses and madmen. The two children, Giulietta
and Mario, clung to a mast and gazed at the sea with staring eyes, as
though senseless.
The sea had subsided a little; but the vessel continued to sink slowly.
Only a few minutes remained to them.
"Launch the long-boat!" shouted the captain.
A boat, the last that remained, was thrown into the water, and fourteen
sailors and three passengers descended into it.
The captain remained on board.
"Come down with us!" they shouted to him from below.
"I must die at my post," replied the captain.
"We shall meet a vessel," the sailors cried to him; "we shall be saved!
Come down! you are lost!"
"I shall remain."
"There is room for one more!" shouted the sailors, turning to the other
passengers. "A woman!"
A woman advanced, aided by the captain; but on seeing the distance at
which the boat lay, she did not feel sufficient courage to leap down,
and fell back upon the deck. The other women had nearly all fainted, and
were as dead.
"A boy!" shouted the sailors.
At that shout, the Sicilian lad and his companion, who had remained up
to that moment petrified as by a supernatural stupor, were suddenly
aroused again by a violent instinct to save their lives. They detached
themselves simultaneously from the mast, and rushed to the side of the
vessel, shrieking in concert: "Take me!" and endeavoring in turn, to
drive the other back, like furious beasts.
"The smallest!" shouted the sailors. "The boat is overloaded! The
smallest!"
On hearing these words, the girl dropped her arms, as though struck by
lightning, and stood motionless, staring at Mario with lustreless eyes.
Mario looked at her for a moment,--saw the spot of blood on her
bodice,--remembered--The gleam of a divine thought flashed across his
face.
"The smallest!" shouted the sailors in chorus, with imperious
impatience. "We are going!"
And then Mario, with a voice which no longer seemed his own, cried: "She
is the lighter! It is for you, Giulietta! You have a father and mother!
I am alone! I give you my place! Go down!"
"Throw her into the sea!" shouted the sailors.
Mario seized Giulietta by the body, and threw her into the sea.
The girl uttered a cry and made a splash; a sailor seized her by the
arm, and dragged her into the boat.
The boy remained at the vessel's side, with his head held high, his hair
streaming in the wind,--motionless, tranquil, sublime.
The boat moved off just in time to escape the whirlpool which the vessel
produced as it sank, and which threatened to overturn it.
Then the girl, who had remained senseless until that moment, raised her
eyes to the boy, and burst into a storm of tears.
"Good by, Mario!" she cried, amid her sobs, with her arms outstretched
towards him. "Good by! Good by! Good by!"
"Good by!" replied the boy, raising his hand on high.
The boat went swiftly away across the troubled sea, beneath the dark
sky. No one on board the vessel shouted any longer. The water was
already lapping the edge of the deck.
Suddenly the boy fell on his knees, with his hands folded and his eyes
raised to heaven.
The girl covered her face.
When she raised her head again, she cast a glance over the sea: the
vessel was no longer there.