Laurier watched Jessie’s great, dark eyes widen and darken with
feeling, and guessed the thought in her mind before she murmured in
anguish:
“Papa!”
He answered tenderly:
“Afloat somewhere on the wide, wide sea, as we are, little Jessie, and
held in the hollow of the same Divine Hand that is able to save us even
from this terrible plight. Be brave, and let us hope for the best.”
His voice trembled, for he knew too well how desperate were their
chances, how slender the thread of hope to which they could cling.
Yet he was not at all unhappy.
All that the world held for him as dearest and sweetest was beside
him here in the person of this girl almost a stranger to him, yet so
fatally dear that she blotted out everything on earth beside.
The world is naught till one is come
Who is the world; then beauty wakes,
And voices sing that have been dumb.
As for Jessie, as full memory returned and she found herself alone with
Laurier on the sunlit sea, under his tender care, her feelings were
unenviable.
When she heard that he was on the steamer it brought back all the cruel
past with a rush of pain.
When she saw him that night and the next day and that night again on
the steamer, she could hardly bear it. When she felt him looking at
her, hot blushes burned her face lest he should recognize her as the
girl who had given him an unrequited love from which he had turned in
disgust.
But in spite of all her pride, she could not help looking at him at
the rare times when he was not looking at her, and she saw that he was
handsomer than ever, but with a different expression, a gravity he had
not worn when she knew him first; something that was almost sadness
lurking in his dark-blue eyes, and chastening the debonair smile that
had thrilled her heart with such subtle tenderness.
She knew from the captain that he had sought an introduction to her,
but she was frightened at the bare idea of it. She would not have
spoken to him for anything the world held.
Then came the horrible alarm of fire, and she had rushed from her
stateroom in the white dressing gown, warm and dainty, in which she had
thrown herself down to rest on her couch. Her father had met her and
caught her in his arms.
She saw Frank Laurier lingering near, but she quickly turned her head
away, saying to herself that she would not speak to him if she were
dying.
Such a little time afterward she had been caught up in his arms and
borne down the ladder to the boat, swooning as soon as she was placed
in it, and now--now--the incredible horror of the thought made her
dizzy--she was lost to all the world but this man, alone with him on
the wide, wide sea, under his protection, at his mercy.
How had it all come about?
Feminine curiosity made her put aside her vow of silence, and she
looked at him with wide, solemn eyes, murmuring:
“Where is the boat?”
“You fell out of it and sank, and those wretches left you to your fate.
I saw them and swam near, catching you as you came to the surface.”
“Then--I--owe--you--my--life!”
“Yes,” he answered, and she wondered at the sweet, significant smile
that played around his lips.
He dared not tell his companion, either, of how the fiends in the boat
had cast her out into the sea to perish. The shock would be too great
to her nerves, already shattered by grief at her father’s loss.
He said to himself that if they escaped the perils of the sea the time
might come when he could safely tell her these things and ask her to
give him her life that he had saved to gladden his home forever.
Higher and higher climbed the sun in the heavens, and the sea glittered
with a brilliancy that pained their eyes while the whitecapped waves
rocked them on the breast of old ocean, the only living objects in the
scene, while far in the distance the smoldering hulk of the _Atlanta_
was slowly sinking from sight as it burned to the water’s edge.
They kept close together, their eyes turned on the far distance,
watching for the gleam of a sail that might presage rescue, but at
last hope began to die in their hearts, they were so weary with the
buffeting of the cruel waves and the hot glare of the sun that they
were almost ready to close their eyes on the waste of sunlit water and
sink down, down, down, through the cool, green darkness to eternal
rest.