THE DEATH OF ALICE LEE
The storm passed away in the night, and when the morning came there
was a breathless calm upon the sea. On my way from the steerage I
looked out through the saloon door for a minute or two. All sail was
set upon the ship, but there was no wind. The white canvas was pouring
in and out somewhat heavily, and as it beat the masts the thunderous,
crackling notes it rang through the motionless atmosphere were like the
noise of the wheels of artillery drawn at a gallop over a stony street.
The sea was breathing heavily after its conflict of the previous day,
and the ship was rolling majestically, but at the same time very
uncomfortably, upon the glass-white swell.
The decks were crowded with emigrants. Children were tumbling and
sporting in the channel under the bulwarks, called the ‘scuppers,’
as though their instincts directed them to find a playground in the
gutters of the ship. Some of the people appeared to be breakfasting.
With one hand they grasped tin mugs full of a steaming black liquid,
probably called tea by those who served it out to them, and in the
other hand they held a piece of flinty biscuit, and with this dry,
disgusting fare a number of the poor creatures were breaking their fast.
There were some delicate faces amongst the women--two or three with
eyes of beauty, and two or three with rich auburn hair. I longed to go
amongst the poor people and ask them questions, and learn from what
parts of the country they came. I thought to myself, one of those many
men and women may have it in his or her power to give me back my memory
by saying something that might serve as a burning brand for the dark
galleries of my brain. But it was a desire which the rules of the ship
forbade me to satisfy.
Presently I caught sight of the gipsy woman. She showed her teeth and
nodded demonstratively, as if she would have her fellow-passengers take
notice that she and I were friends. I coldly nodded in return, and
then, learning from the stewardess that Mrs. Lee had not yet left her
berth, I walked to the end of the saloon, where I could sit retired,
and there waited for the breakfast-bell to ring and for the passengers
to appear.
The first to come out of her berth was Mrs. Lee. She immediately saw
and approached me. She looked as if she had been crying, and there was
an expression of deep and settled grief in her face. I asked after
Alice, but with a sinking heart, as I gazed at the poor, anxious,
devoted mother.
‘She has been very ill in the night,’ she answered. ‘She is very low
this morning.’
‘But yesterday she seemed so much better.’
‘Oh! she is dying, Agnes, she is leaving me. God is fast withdrawing
her from me now,’ and she wept afresh.
I hung my head. I could not look into the face of her grief and find
words.
And now again the poor woman reproached herself for having brought her
child to sea when it was too late. She talked indeed as though she had
overheard what Mr. McEwan had said to me on the previous day, or as
though he had repeated his discourse to her.
‘She would have been comfortable at home,’ she exclaimed amidst her
sobs. ‘Her rest is broken by the narrow bunk she lies in, and she
is distressed by the movements of the ship. At home she would lie
peacefully in her own bedroom, she would be surrounded by familiar
objects, friends would come and sit with her, and--oh, Agnes!’ She
stopped in her speech as though a spasm had wrenched her heart.
I knew what was in her mind, and the tears sprang into my eyes.
‘Her grave,’ continued Mrs. Lee in a whisper, ‘would not be far away
from me. I should be able to visit it, to see that it is tended as her
sister’s is: but----’ She stopped again in her speech and directed her
eyes at one of the large circular windows through which, as the ship
rolled, we could now and again catch a sight of the glassy volumes of
water.
While she talked of her dying child the breakfast-bell rang. She rose
and said: ‘I cannot sit at the table. I cannot bear to be asked
questions about Alice, though they are kindly meant. Come to me when
you have breakfasted,’ and she returned to her berth.
I felt, now that the mother was without hope, that there was no hope
indeed. My own grief was so keen that I was as unequal to the task of
sitting at the breakfast table as Mrs. Lee, and after drinking a cup
of tea, which one of the stewards brought to me before the passengers
assembled, I slipped downstairs to my cabin there to wait until it
should be time to visit Alice. My low spirits were not only owing to
the news which Mrs. Lee had given me: I had passed a miserable night
disturbed by many shapeless undeterminable dreams, and broken by long
passages of waking thought. The gipsy woman’s repeated deliberate
assurance that I was not only a wife but a mother also influenced me
as though her words were the truth itself. A secret voice within me
was for ever whispering, ‘It is so! It is so!’ and I cannot express
how dreadful was the anguish of my mind as I sought in the void within
for any, the least, stir of shadow to which I could give some form of
memory.
And I was sensible too of a heartache as of yearning, though I knew not
what I yearned for. I sought to explain to myself this subtle craving
by saying, ‘I am a mother and I yearn for my children;’ and yet my
children were to me then as though they had never been born! What,
then, did this sense of yearning signify? Was it a desire put into my
head by the gipsy woman’s talk--first, the belief that I was a mother
as she had said, and then a craving to _know_ whether or not I had left
children behind me in my unknown home? Or was it the deep, unfailing,
deathless, maternal instinct whose accents were sounding to my heart
out of the darkness that was upon my mind, as the whisper of a spirit
falls upon the waking ear in the blackness of the night, serving as an
impulse and an inspiration, though the listener knows not whence the
sound proceeds nor what it is?
It happened as Mrs. Lee had feared. As the wife of a shipowner she had
met many seafaring men in her time, and she talked of the sea with
something of the knowledge of an experienced ocean traveller. The calm
weather which she had dreaded happened. For many days, whose number my
memory does not carry, the sea stretched flat and lifeless round about
the ship, and the rim of it was dim with the faint blue haze of heat
whilst the central sky was a blaze of white light. Faint airs called
catspaws occasionally tarnished the table-flat plain of the ocean; but
so weak were these draughts that they expired long before they reached
the ship, and for hours and for days the _Deal Castle_ sat upright upon
the water without motion except a small swaying of her mast-heads,
and there was so perfect a reflection of her fabric of black sides and
star-white canvas under her that one might have believed on gazing over
the side that she rested on a sheet of looking-glass.
No sail could heave into view in such stagnant weather. Never was the
hot, blurred edge of the ocean broken by the thread-like shadowing of
a steamer’s smoke. There was nothing to see but water, and there was
nothing for the passengers to do but to lounge and eat and sleep and
grumble. The heat told fearfully on Alice Lee. The saloon and berths
were unendurably hot, and the doctor ordered the girl to be carried on
deck on a couch. She begged not to be disturbed; her mother entreated
her to allow the people to carry her on deck, and then she consented;
but when they put their hands upon her she fainted, and so deep and
long was her swoon that we feared she had died. The doctor then
directed that she should be left as she was.
Her mother and I nursed her between us. Mrs. Richards put a little
arm-chair in the dying girl’s berth, and I sat and watched whilst Mrs.
Lee slept; and then, when it came to Mrs. Lee’s turn to watch, I would
fall asleep in the chair, and thus we would pass the nights. Oh, it was
a bitter sad time! The mother fought with her grief in the sight of her
child that she might not witness the agony of her affliction; but often
at night, when she lay down after several hours of watching, instead of
sleeping she would weep, very silently indeed, but I could tell by the
breathing that her tears were flowing.
Alice’s sufferings were not great. Time after time in the silent
watches of the night--and silent indeed were the watches of those
breathless nights of equatorial calm--I would rise on observing the
dear girl to move uneasily, bend over her, and ask if she suffered; and
regularly would she answer me in her sweet voice and with her sweet
smile that she was free from pain, that she desired but a little air,
but that she was not suffering, and then she would extend her thin,
damp, cold hand for me to hold, and ask me if her mother was sleeping,
and then whisper that she was happy, that she was dying, that she
knew she was dying, but that the holy peace of God which passes all
understanding was upon her heart, and that she was praying for the hour
to come when He would take her to Himself.
Once she awoke uttering a cry as of rapture. I was at her side in an
instant.
She looked a little strangely at me, then, as an expression of
recognition entered her eyes, she exclaimed; ‘I have been with my angel
sister. Can it have been a dream? How real, how real it was! We stood
together hand in hand--I do not know where--the light was that of the
moon. Our dear mother was coming and we waited for her. Can it have
been a dream?’ Her smile faded; she sighed, closed her eyes, and was
presently asleep again.
I could tell you many sweet things of this beautiful character as she
lay dying in that little cabin, but it is my own, and not Alice Lee’s,
story that I have undertaken to relate. Yet the mystical part that she
played in the turning-point of my life is so truly wonderful that I
cannot but dwell upon her blessed memory. She was the good angel of my
life, and God afterwards sent her from Heaven to me, as you shall read
when you come to that part of my experiences.
And though I had known her but for a few weeks, yet as she lay dying
on her bed my love could not have been deeper for her than had she
been flesh of my own flesh, had she been my sister or my child, had her
mother been mine, and we had grown together in years with never a day
of separation.
It was the night of the eleventh day of the calm, but this night the
breathlessness of the atmosphere was broken by a faint air of wind. The
window of Alice’s berth was wide open, but though I put my hand into it
I felt no movement of air. Yet a small weak wind was blowing; it was
past midnight, and in the stillness of this hour I heard the noise of
waters faintly rippling, and the deep silence was unbroken by the notes
of flapping canvas, for there was wind enough to ‘put the sails to
sleep,’ as a pretty saying of the sea goes.
Mrs. Lee had been lying down since ten o’clock, and was sleeping, but I
should awaken her presently, for it had been arranged that she should
watch from after midnight until three or four in the morning. I was
faint, and there was a feeling of nausea upon me. The atmosphere of the
cabin was oppressively close. In spite of the awning having been spread
throughout the day the heat of the sun was in the planks of the deck,
and this heat, though it was now the hour of midnight, was still in
the planks, and it struck through into the atmosphere of the cabin as
though a great oven rested on the ceiling of the little interior.
There are many sorts of illness which are sad and afflicting to
nurse, but none so sad and afflicting, I think, as consumption in
its last stage. There was a weight upon my spirits; I panted for
the deck, and for the starlit freedom of the cool night. Alice had
been resting motionlessly for nearly an hour. I knew not whether she
slept or was awake, and would not look lest I should disturb her if
she was sleeping. Her eyes were closed, her thin hands were crossed
saint-like upon her breast, her face was as white as though the moon
shone upon it. Through the open window, that was somewhat above her
sleeping-shelf and near her head, I saw a large golden star shining:
the rolling of the ship was so slight that the star continued to shine
in the aperture, sliding up and down, but never beyond the limits of
the circle of window. The effect of the girl’s white face, and of this
star that seemed to be sliding to and fro near it, was extraordinary.
A strange fancy entered my head: I thought of the star as of Alice’s
spirit hovering close to the form that was not yet inanimate, and
waiting for death to give the signal for its flight to Heaven; and
whilst I thus thought, looking at the white face and the golden star
shining in the cabin window, a sweet low voice began to sing the
opening lines of that beautiful hymn, ‘Abide with Me.’
The voice was faint and sounded as though it came from a distance,
but it was inexpressibly sweet. I started, believing that someone was
singing on deck, for the voice of anyone singing on deck would strike
faintly upon the ear through the open cabin window, even as this voice
did. Then I said to myself, ‘It is Alice who is singing,’ and stepping
to her side I was in time to witness the movement of her lips ere she
ceased, after having sung but little more than the first two lines of
the hymn. Her eyes were closed, her hands remained crossed upon her
bosom; she had not stirred, and there was no doubt that she sang in her
sleep.
About this hour Mrs. Lee lifted her head from her pillow, then arose,
and after gazing silently for awhile at her child, she approached me,
put her lips to my ear, and bade me in almost breathless accents take
the sleep I needed. I answered in a whisper that I could not sleep,
and asked her to allow me to go on deck to breathe the cool air for
a quarter of an hour or so, telling her where she would find me.
She acquiesced with a motion of her head, and catching up a shawl I
noiselessly passed out from the cabin.
The saloon lamps had long been extinguished, but a plentiful haze of
starlight floated through the open skylights. Not knowing but that Mr.
Harris might have charge of the ship, and desiring to avoid him, though
even if he were on the poop and saw me there I did not suppose he would
address me, I passed through the saloon on to the quarter-deck, and
seated myself half-way up one of the ladders which conducted to the
poop, and, my attire being dark, and the darkness where I sat being
deep, there was small chance of my being observed unless someone came
to the ladder to mount or descend it.
The night air was delicious. Low over the sea on my left hand side was
a dark red scar of moon; it was floating slowly up out of the east with
its fragment of disk large and distorted by the hot atmosphere through
which it stared. The sails of the ship rose pale, and the topmost
of them looked so high up that the faint pallid spaces seemed to be
hovering cloud-like close under the stars. The faint breeze held the
canvas motionless, and not a sound came from those airy heights.
The figure of a man moved on the forecastle; otherwise the decks--so
much of them, at least, as my sight commanded--were tenantless. The
night was the more peaceful for the soft air that blew. The delicate
noise of rippling waters lulled the senses, and at another time I
should have fallen asleep to that gentle music of the sea, but my
heart was too full to suffer me to slumber then; the tears fell from my
eyes. A sweet girl was dying; the gentlest heart that ever beat in a
woman’s breast might even now, as I sat thinking, have ceased to throb;
one whom I dearly loved, whose tenderness for me had been that of a
sister, was dying, might even now be dead, and as I sat thinking of her
I wept.
I looked up at the sky; it was crowded with stars, and many meteors
glanced in the dark heights. I asked myself, ‘Where is Heaven?’ We look
upwards and think that Heaven is where we direct our eyes, but I knew
that even as I looked the prospect of the stars was slowly changing,
so that if Heaven were _there_ where I was now gazing it would not be
there presently. Where then was Heaven? And when the soul of the sweet
girl who was dying in her cabin quitted her body whither would it fly?
Then I remembered that she herself had told me that we looked upwards
when we thought of Heaven because the light was there, the light of the
sun, and the moon, and the stars, but that God whom she had taught me
to remember and to pray to was everywhere.
This thought of God’s presence--for if He was everywhere He must be
where I now was--awed me, and, rising from the step upon which I was
seated, I knelt and prayed, weeping bitterly as I uttered the words
which arose from my heart. I prayed that my memory might be restored
to me; I prayed that, if I were a wife and a mother, the image of my
husband and my children would be presented to me that I might know them
and return to them. But I did not pray for Alice Lee. She was already
His to whom I knelt, and I knew in my heart that even if it had been
in the power of prayer to save her she would not desire another hour of
life unless--and here I turned my head and looked at the dark surface
of sea and thought of it as her grave.
I resumed the seat I had arisen from in order to kneel, and again
surrendered myself to thought. I heard the measured tread of a man upon
the poop-deck that stretched above and behind me. He came to the rail,
and stood at the head of the steps which lay opposite to those on which
I was seated. His figure showed black against the starless sky, and I
saw that he was not Mr. Harris, but Mr. ----, the second officer of the
vessel. He whistled softly to himself as he stood awhile surveying the
sea and the ship.
One reads often in poetry and in stories of the loneliness of the
night watch on the ocean; but one should bear a secret part in such
a watch--a part such as I was now bearing, with a heart of lead and
with eyes which burnt with recent tears--to compass what is meant when
the loneliness of the night watch at sea is sung or written of. Nobody
stirred upon the ship but the figure of this second officer and some
dim shadowy shape far forward on the forecastle, flitting among and
blending with the deep masses of dye cast upon the atmosphere there by
the sails. Not a sound was to be heard saving the sigh of the faint
wind in the rigging, and the tinkling noise of rippling water. The
fragment of moon was still red in the east, and as yet without power to
touch the dark ocean under it with light. Two bells were struck on some
part of the deck, and the tremulous chimes went floating up into the
hollows of the sails, and trembled in the pallid concavities in echoes.
The figure of the second officer moved away from the rail; and now,
though a little while before I had believed myself sleepless, my head
insensibly sank forward, my eyes closed, and I slumbered.
I was awakened by a hand laid upon my shoulder. I started with a cry,
and gazed around me. No situation would more bewilder one new to the
sea than the being suddenly aroused and finding oneself on the deck of
a ship, with the stars shining and the tall sails spreading over one,
and the night wind of the deck blowing upon one’s face. The person who
had awakened me was Mr. McEwan.
‘This is a strange bed for a lady to be sleeping upon at this hour of
the night,’ said he; ‘but I have no heart and no time now to represent
the folly ye commeet in sleeping in such a dew as is falling. I have
been to see Miss Alice Lee; she is dying. She will be gone before that
moon there has climbed to over our mast-heads. She wishes to see you,
and her mother asked me to find and send you to her. Go and comfort
the puir old lady. God knows she needs comfort! There is nothing I can
do for the girl,’ and he abruptly quitted me, and disappeared in the
gloom of the saloon.
I immediately made my way to Mrs. Lee’s cabin, but before entering I
stood upon a chair that I might see the clock under the skylight. The
time was a quarter to two. I was now able to read the clock, though
when I had first come on board the _Deal Castle_, having no memory of
the figures, I was unable to tell the time. I quietly opened the door
and entered. Mrs. Lee was kneeling at the side of her sleeping-shelf,
which was below the bunk in which her daughter lay, and she was so lost
in prayer that she did not hear me enter. I crept to Alice’s side, and
then her mother, perceiving me, arose.
Though the cabin lamp was turned down, there was plenty of light to
see by. Alice’s eyes were closed, but after I had stood a moment or
two looking at her she opened them, saw me and knew me, and a smile of
touching sweetness lighted up her wasted face. She feebly moved her
hand, but with a gesture which made me know she wished me to hold it.
I bowed my head close to her face, and asked her in a whisper if she
was in pain. She answered no; and then I asked her if she was happy,
on which she looked at me and smiled. Her lips moved, but she seemed
powerless to give expression to her thoughts. I bent my ear close to
her mouth, and I heard her say in a whisper as dim and far off as the
voice one hears in a dream:
‘I have been praying that God will give you back your memory----My
beloved mother will be your friend----’
The whisper ceased, she smiled again, twitched her fingers that I might
relax my hold of her hand, and looked at her mother, who took her hand
and held it.
I withdrew to the chair in which I had been wont to keep a watch while
Mrs. Lee slept, that the mother and daughter might, in that sacred
time, be alone together. But the sweet girl never spoke again. Whilst
her hand was still clasped by her mother she turned her face to the
side of the ship and passed away, dying so quietly that her death was
as noiseless as the fall of the leaf of a flower in the night--dying so
quietly that her mother knew not when the soul of her child had fled,
and continued holding her hand, with not a sound breaking the sacred
stillness of that little cabin save the rippling of the water tinkling
to the ear through the embrasure of the window, from whose dark disk
the large golden star had gone.
‘Mark,’ says the most eloquent of divines, ‘mark the rain that falls
from above, and the same shower that droppeth out of one cloud
increaseth sundry plants in a garden, and severally according to the
condition of every plant. In one stalk it makes a rose, in another a
violet, divers in a third, and sweet in all. So the Spirit makes its
multiformous effects in several complexions and all according to the
increase of God.’
The rose of this fair garden was dead. But what says this same most
eloquent of all divines, the rose being dead, and the perfume, which is
its spirit, gone from it?
‘As when the eye meets with light it is the comfort of the eye: when
the ear meets with harmony it is the comfort of the ear. What is the
most transcendent consolation therefore but the union of the soul with
God?’
Until long after the dawn had broken Mrs. Lee and I remained with the
dead. The poor mother seemed at first stupefied. Mr. McEwan came in,
looked at Alice, pronounced that all was over, and with a sigh and a
gentle nod to Mrs. Lee softly quitted the cabin.
And then it was that the poor mother appeared to have been changed into
stone. She held the dead girl’s hand, and kept her eyes fastened upon
the averted face. At last a sob convulsed her. Another and a third
followed, and, releasing her child’s hand, she threw herself into a
chair, hid her face, and wept. Oh how she wept! and I feared that her
heart had broken. Then, when she had calmed down somewhat, I took
her hand and said whatever I thought might soothe her. But there was
nothing under Heaven to soothe grief so recent as hers, with the body
of her sweet daughter lying within view, though she may have found a
sort of sympathy which no other person on board could have possessed
for her in my own distressed condition; for from time to time as I
talked she would lift her streaming eyes to my face with an expression
of deep pity that for the moment overlay the look of her own grief.
It was indeed as though she should say, ‘Great as is my sorrow here,
seeking to comfort me is one whose sorrow may be even greater than
mine.’
We passed the hours until some time after dawn had broken in prayer
and in tears, and in whispering of the dead. Often the mother would
rise to look at her, and then come back and talk to me about her--of
the sweetness of her disposition even when she was a little child,
of her tenderness and goodness as a daughter, of her simple innocent
pleasures, of her tastes; how the poor whom she had visited and
comforted loved her and blessed her name.
When the morning had fairly come I saw it was no longer fit that the
poor bereaved mother should continue in this cabin in sight of her
child’s body, so, telling her that I would presently return, I entered
the saloon, and, seeing nothing of Mrs. Richards, I descended into
the steerage and found her in her cabin. I told her that Alice Lee
was dead. She heard me with a look of sorrow, but it was impossible
that she should feel surprise. I told her that Mrs. Lee was nearly
heartbroken, and begged that another cabin might be prepared for her
where she might remain private until after the funeral. She reflected
and said:
‘All the saloon cabins are occupied. It would not be right to offer
her a berth in the steerage. I will speak to the captain at once; the
surgeon is sure to have reported the poor young lady’s death to him;
pray return to Mrs. Lee until I am able to tell you what can be done.’
Shortly after I had returned to Mrs. Lee’s cabin a number of the
passengers came out of their berths, and the news that Alice Lee was
dead swiftly went from mouth to mouth. Then it was, as I afterwards
came to know, that Mrs. Webber, meeting Mrs. Richards as she came from
the captain’s cabin, learnt from the stewardess that there was no
berth vacant in the saloon for the reception of Mrs. Lee, and that the
poor bereaved mother would have to retire for awhile to a cabin in the
darksome steerage. The good-natured, sympathetic Mrs. Webber would not
hear of this; she bade Mrs. Richards wait for a little, and going to
one of the ladies she promptly arranged to share her berth with her;
Mr. Webber and the lady’s husband sleeping meanwhile in cabins occupied
by single men. All this Mrs. Webber promptly arranged. Her sympathetic
enthusiasm swept away every difficulty, and before the breakfast-bell
summoned the passengers to the saloon table Mrs. Lee and I were
installed in the Webbers’ cabin.
The state of the weather required that the funeral should not be
delayed, but I own that I was not a little shocked when I learnt that
the ceremony was to take place at eleven that morning. I had met
Captain Ladmore in the saloon as I came from my berth in the steerage
to rejoin Mrs. Lee in her new quarters, and he stopped me to ask in his
grave sad way how Mrs. Lee did, and to inquire after the last moments
of the dear girl. I answered him as best I could, and then, seeing Mrs.
Richards come out of the berth that had been occupied by Mrs. Lee, it
entered my head to ask the captain when the funeral would take place.
‘I have arranged,’ said he, ‘that it shall take place at eleven.’
‘At eleven!--this morning?’ cried I, starting. ‘That is terribly soon,
Captain Ladmore.’
‘It is terribly soon, as you say,’ he answered, ‘but at sea there is no
sentiment, and the claims of the living at sea are far more imperious
than ever they can be ashore. I do not wish to intrude upon Mrs. Lee.
Her sorrow is too fresh to admit of intrusion. I will ask you to tell
her that the funeral takes place at eleven, and you will also say that
I too have suffered keenly, even as keenly as she, and that I feel for
her,’ and, giving me a slight hurried bow to conceal his emotion, he
left me.
I broke the intelligence as softly as I was able to the poor bereaved
mother. A scared look entered her eyes, which were red with weeping,
and she convulsively motioned with her arm as though she would speak
but could not; she then hid her face in her hands and swayed her form
as though she wrestled with the agony of her affliction. I stood at the
port-hole, looking through it at the sea, but my eyes were blind with
tears, and I could behold nothing but the image of Alice Lee, already
draped, perhaps, in her sea-shroud--in less than two hours to have
vanished for ever in that mighty sepulchre of ocean from which, as a
grave, her pure sweet spirit had shrunk, so great was her horror of its
vastness, albeit she knew that her Lord, in whom she believed and whom
she loved, was awaiting and would receive her, though an ocean as wide
as the heavens themselves rolled between her and Him. Presently I felt
Mrs. Lee’s hand upon my arm.
‘Agnes, will you attend my darling’s funeral?’
‘If you wish it, dear Mrs. Lee, yes.’
‘I could not be present--I could not----. You will tell me----’ She
broke down and wept upon my shoulder; but I readily gathered her
thoughts from her grief-broken utterance.
Shortly before eleven I quitted her cabin. She looked me in the eyes
and kissed me on the brow before I left her. I went to the berth that
I had been occupying, but that I was to occupy no longer, and put on
a black veil which Mrs. Lee had given to me to wear. I also put on a
pair of black gloves which had belonged to sweet Alice Lee. I had no
more mourning to wear. As I passed through the saloon I heard the sound
of the ship’s bell tolling. It chimed in a funeral note, but the wide
glory of the morning took all significance of grief out of it. The soft
wind which had fanned the ship forward during the night still blew;
the sun was within an hour of his meridian, and the rippling sea was a
vast dazzling plain, a surface of white fire wrinkling southward. There
could be nothing funereal in the tolling of a bell on such a morning as
this; the life of the flashing universe was in every trembling pulse
of the slowly recurring chimes.
The emigrants crowded the deck in the forward part of the ship. They
stared with eager eyes, and every face wore an expression of vulgar,
morbid curiosity. The children amongst them stared too, but they were
silent and wondering, and often would they look up at the sails and
around at the furniture of the ship, as though all familiar objects had
been rendered fresh and strange to their young eyes. Most of the crew,
in clean white attire, stood in ranks in front of the emigrants. Every
man’s shadow softly swung at his feet, and just past and close behind
one bushy-whiskered face was the tawny countenance of the gipsy woman,
her eyes full of fire, and her mouth wide with a grin that seemed to
fling a complexion of irony upon the serious, vulgar, and grimy faces
round about in her neighbourhood.
The saloon passengers had clothed themselves in black. They were
congregated on the quarter-deck, at a short distance from the part of
the bulwark where the body was to be launched. The hour of eleven was
struck, six blows on the bell announcing the time; and the captain,
stalking gravely out of the saloon, Prayer-book in hand, took up his
station close against the bulwarks, where the sailors had made an
opening by lifting out a piece of the rail. A few moments later the
body was borne forth from the saloon, and at the sight of it every man
took off his hat, and a strange sound, like a subdued moan uttered by
many persons at one instant, came from the crowd of emigrants.
The body was carried by four sailors; it was covered by a large
flag--the red ensign of the English merchant service--and the crimson
edges of the flag trailed along the white planks as the sailors, with
measured tread, bore their sweet and sacred burthen to the bulwarks.
The captain, opening his book, began to read the funeral service in
a deep, clear voice; but often there was a tremor, often there was a
break of emotion in his tones, which made those who knew how it had
been with him feel that his heart was away with his own dead in the old
home. Sobs often broke from the ladies.
So young! So sweet! So good! Whilst my eyes streamed with tears, and
whilst my ears followed the touching words recited by the captain,
my heart asked many questions. Why should one so gentle, so pure, so
young, be taken? Why for years should she have been haunted by the
terrible spectre of death, a shadow for ever creeping closer and closer
to her, poising its certain and envenomed lance, for years haunting her
hours and her dreams with its ever-growing apparition? Oh, how cruel!
how hard to bear is the continuous dread and expectation of death! I
thought. And when I remembered how she had answered me when I spoke
aloud to her some such thoughts as were now running in my mind: how she
had told me that the victory of the spirit over life, and all that life
can tempt it with, is by suffering and pain; that the great triumph
of our salvation was the fruit of suffering and of pain, the sweet,
dear, glad voice spoke to me yet. I seemed to hear its pure accents
creeping into my ear from the pale form hidden by the crimson flag. The
voice told me that all was well with her, that the conquest was hers,
that she had exchanged the dim pale shadows of this dream called life
for the shining and glorious realities which had been promised to her
by One whose word was Love, unfailing and imperishable, and that she
was--as no one in this life can be--happy.
At a signal from the captain the flag was removed, the grating on
which the body rested was tilted, and the body, sewn up in snow-white
sail-cloth, flashed from the ship’s side.