“ALONE ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA.”
“What fun this is!” exclaimed the pretty boy, Charlie Dacy.
He was convulsed with amusement, filled with unlawful delight. On each
side of the companion was a small recess that commanded a view of the
steps leading below. He had put Nina in one, and he stood in the other;
and he was busily engaged in chaffing the various specimens of humanity
who made their way up and down this particular opening to the deck.
Nina knew she ought not to stay, and at intervals made feeble efforts
to escape him; but he was so amusing, and was so fond, or pretended to
be so fond, of her society, that she could not get away.
“Here come the Hook and Eye,” he exclaimed, gleefully, “I hear them
rattling down the passage!”
A lean, gaunt woman in a black bonnet and green veil came tugging up
the stairway, a diminutive husband hanging loosely and helplessly on
her arm.
The boy politely took off his cap when they came abreast of him. “Does
your husband find himself in recovered health this afternoon, madam?”
“Hold your saucy tongue,” said the woman, abruptly and unexpectedly, as
she passed him.
“Sharper than I thought,” he muttered, staggering back as if he had
received a blow.
To atone for his misconduct, Nina followed the strange pair out on
deck, and quite restored them to good humour by sending a steward to
get a comfortable chair for the husband. Then she went back, resolving
to exercise her powers of persuasion on Master Charles to get him to
leave his present employment, and play shuffleboard with her.
He had both hands up to his mouth when she reached him. With red,
inflated cheeks, and a seemingly prodigious exercise of strength, he
was in a whisper proclaiming, “Ship ahoy!” He dared not say it aloud,
for it was Captain Fordyce who was coming slowly up the stair, his head
bent, his handkerchief twisted loosely in his fingers.
The instant his eyes were raised the boy dropped his hands, and stood
before him sober and respectful.
Captain Fordyce looked at him, and as the handsome youth had become
Nina’s almost inseparable companion, he asked, “Where is my wife,
Dacy?”
“I think she must be hiding from you, sir. She was here until she saw
you coming.”
“Here I am,” said Nina, coming forward.
“I have got a cinder in my eye, will you take it out?” inquired her
husband, stepping out on deck and handing her his handkerchief.
Dacy had followed them, and looked on with interest as Nina warily
chased a tiny piece of coal about her husband’s inflamed eyelid.
“You should have some flaxseed,” he said, critically; “that is the
best way to get anything out of the eye. You put in one or two grains,
and they swell and emit a sticky substance which covers your eyeball,
and takes in the cinder or whatever has got in. Then you just wash the
whole thing out, and you haven’t irritated your membrane.”
“A good scheme,” said Captain Fordyce, “but unfortunately there is no
flaxseed here. Ah! there it is,” and he held up a jagged cinder.
“Whew! that’s a large one,” exclaimed the boy, pityingly; “why, sir,
you’ve been carrying about a stoker in your eye.”
“‘A chief engineer,’ we call that size,” replied Captain Fordyce,
dryly, pressing his handkerchief to his face, and looking as if he were
about to go away.
“Can’t you stay for a little while?” asked Nina, balancing herself
against a near boat, and glancing shyly up at him.
He smiled, turned his back to everything on the ship but her, and
began to talk in a low tone. This was one of her elusive days. She had
scarcely spoken a word to him since breakfast.
While he talked, Prince Charlie sat perched on the rail a little
beyond him, in a lonely and disconsolate fashion. He knew that he was
not wanted just now; and Nina smiled as she saw, over her husband’s
shoulder, that he was making a pretence of throwing himself overboard.
Agile, sure-footed as a monkey, how did it happen that when she raised
remonstrating eyes after a sentence that, coming from the sensible man
before her, was nonsensical to the last degree, she saw that the boy’s
play had turned to frightful earnest?
He had lost his balance. One glimpse she had of a pale, resolved face,
two boyish, eager hands clutching wildly at the rail; then without a
sound he dropped bravely into the ocean.
“Man overboard! Man overboard!” The piercing cry rang over the ship,
and made her blood run cold in her veins. Then other voices took it up;
and her husband, with his foolish sentence not yet cold on his lips,
muttered a strangely mixed “Confound that boy!” and “God bless you,
darling!” and was swinging himself over the side of the ship.
Nina clung to his arm with all her strength. “His mother--I promised
her to look after him,” he said, putting her aside as easily as if she
were a baby; and she wrung her hands as he escaped from her grasp.
Some one had thrown a life-buoy. He struck out for it as he reached the
water; then with swift, steady strokes swam toward the dash of gold on
the blue waters astern, where poor Prince Charlie was making a gallant
struggle for life.
The officer of the watch was shouting directions in a calm, stentorian
voice: “Stop and reverse! Lower the lee quarter bo-o-at!”
Sailors came hurrying down the deck to fulfil his orders. Nina heard,
but did not see them, for her tortured eyes were fixed on the jet-black
spot growing fainter and fainter in the distance. Something that was
not fear, that was rather exultant pride and agitation, swelled her
heart almost to bursting. The tears streaming down her cheeks, she fell
on her knees and sent to heaven a frantic, earnest prayer that the
strength of his arm might not fail, that his heart might be strong.
But what was this? In one instant, as effectually as if giant hands
from the sky had lowered and folded around them a heavy blanket,
everything beyond the bulwarks of their ship was cut off from their
vision, swallowed up in the fog.
“O God,” she muttered, “why must this one day be darkened?”
Then she rose from her knees, hard and unbelieving, now that her
petition was about to be denied her. There was no hope now, and
what would her life be? Through the sullen folds of the fog she saw
stretching out before her a long, black, solitary road leading to an
open grave. And she must walk that road alone.
She groped her way across the deck and struggled into her room.
Broken-hearted and despairing, her whole soul rebelling with a dull,
human protest against the fate that follows us, overshadows and dogs us
to the tomb, she stood motionless till out of the terrible hush outside
rose a shriek like that of a lost soul.
It was only the fog-horn; but it put into her head a new and ghastly
thought. The other was terrible enough,--a vision of feeble, weakening
hands, beating helplessly against the waves; but this,--the sickening
thought drove her mad. That dear head in the maw of a monster of the
deep,--a blessed oblivion came over her.
One quarter of an hour went by, then another, and at the end of the
second Nina turned feebly and murmured, “What is it, Merdyce?”
Ever since the day that he repulsed her in her quest for her husband,
the boy had been her faithful, devoted attendant, ready in every case
to fulfil her wishes, sometimes even to anticipate them. He was gently
shaking her arm now. Never on the face of the great deep would there be
a more delighted face rising above a black jacket and brass buttons.
“Have I been asleep?” she whispered. “Why, the sun is shining; it must
be morning. And have I been all night on the floor?”
Bit by bit the day came back to her, as he spluttered and gurgled
confused sentences.
“They’ve come--’twas mortal hard work to find them--a powerful
swim--the boy dead weight--had to swim with one hand--the master--”
“What!” shrieked Nina, springing to her feet, “my husband!”
With one bound she was outside. Hundreds of people were thronging the
decks, swarming over the skylights, the cabins, the rigging, and from
them all was going up a mighty shout. For the feet of the boat’s crew
had just touched the deck.
No one noticed her. One brief, upward glance, a short, intense
thanksgiving, and then, like a frightened bird kept from her nest, she
was circling around the crowd of people, trying to reach the place
where she saw standing a wet, capless, coatless, bedraggled figure.
He saw her coming, and opened a way for her. Her eyes were shining
with the long-looked-for light, full into his. Below the words of
congratulation and confused talk that surrounded him, her low-spoken
words pierced his soul, “My darling!--I _do_ love you.” And he knew
that the dream of years was realised at last. She was clinging to
his hand, laying her cheek against it, with something new in the
caress,--something that had never been there before.
Nor had she eyes for any other person; not even for Prince Charlie, who
had come back from the jaws of death only a little sobered, and who
was standing in a pool of water beside her, shivering and murmuring,
waggishly, “Home they brought her warrior wet.”
It drew Captain Fordyce’s attention to him. “Dacy, go and put on some
dry things,” he said, quickly. Then he turned his attention again to
his wife.
She was murmuring fond, wild words to herself. He smiled, whispered a
few words in her ear, then, putting her gently aside, went to exchange
his brine-soaked garments for other more suitable ones. But he went in
peace and in joy, knowing that he would shortly return to her to meet
her long delayed but full surrender.