Chapter Fourteen.
“Take me with you.”
The terrible swiftness of the tragedy following upon the fierce combat had left the spectators on the Irene stupefied. They gazed at the tossing waters with startled eyes, and when they withdrew their gaze, and would look at each other, there came between them the vision of falling spars, of people precipitated headlong into the sea, and of a great ship rolling over on them.
Then some of the men sobbed, and some swore.
Webster whispered the name of his sister, and Miss Anstrade seemed to shrink within herself.
Their comrades, those brave hearts, gone, gone in a few minutes, and to save them!
They put about, steamed slowly over the waste of waters, where floated a litter of wreckage, and rescued half a dozen Brazilian sailors. Of Captain Pardoe, or any of his gallant band, there was no trace, and the Irene moved up and down among the wreckage, while those on board searched in vain for a familiar form.
Then Lieutenant Webster steered for the east.
The venture was over. The Irene, battered as she was, could not dare to risk another meeting with a cruiser, and so, sick at heart and indifferent, Webster accepted Hume’s advice and steamed away from Brazil.
As for Miss Anstrade, she went, feeling her way, like one blinded, to the cabin that had been prepared for her, and there sat white and silent, while her dark eyes, glaring with an unnatural light, moved restlessly from object to object. In the afternoon she rushed on deck in a raging fever, and, calling on her brother and Captain Pardoe, would have leapt overboard had not Hume caught her as her hand was on the rigging. He and Webster carried her down, struggling pitifully, and in turns the two of them watched through the night by her side, their sorrow tinged with awe and bitterness, because of their helplessness, at the pathetic ravings of a mind in delirium.
Through the next dreary day they continued their vigil, and the sailors, gathering in groups, added to the gloom of the ship by their distressed air and dark forebodings.
“They knew it,” said they one to another. “No job of that sort, led by a woman, could succeed. It was against Nature, and the ways of the sea. The ship was doomed, and they were doomed, and they wished to God they had gone to their death bravely on the Swift.”
These were not brave words; but superstition has not been driven from the high seas by steam, and once the natural buoyancy of a sailor is steeped in the gloom of ill-luck, there is no brightness in his horizon. The heroism of Captain Pardoe and their comrades, who had courted destruction in the Swift, filled them, moreover, with a bitter feeling of irritation that they themselves should have been spared, and mingled with the dark prevailing tinge of superstition was an impulse of recklessness which, in the absence of any emergency, could find expression only in breaches of discipline. They lolled about in the shadow, seeking relief from the intolerable heat.
The man at the wheel gave a listless eye to the binnacle, and the Irene, battered, dirty, with fires ill-kept, ploughed slowly on, as melancholy, almost, as though she were still a derelict.
Webster took the sun at noon, and, utterly worn out, fell asleep over his reckonings, and so he was found in the afternoon by Hume, who came on deck from a long watch.
“Have I been asleep? There’s a heaviness in the air and a strange weight about my eyelids. How is she, Hume?”
“Quiet now, with the Captain’s boy at the door. Was it a month ago the Swift went down?”
“Only yesterday, Frank. My God! what a difference! The sea is not the same, nor the sky, nor the air we breathe, nor the look of anyone.”
“What an old tub this is, and do you note how the men hang about? I feel as though I cannot breathe freely. I have been thinking of your sister; it is a sad end to her waiting.”
“Ah! poor Loo,” murmured Webster. “Frank, I dare not go home with this story. I cannot. She will say I should have taken the risk myself.”
“Yet his death was worth living for.” Hume moved backward and forward by the chart house, while Webster gloomily looked at his figures. “Webster,” he said earnestly, “do you think there is any hope?”
“For Miss Anstrade? It is terrible that she should have fallen ill—terrible. I could have borne anything almost but that. Without a doctor, without a nurse, left to the bungling of two rough men. It will be worse still when she comes to an understanding of her helplessness.”
“You think she will recover? As I watched her this afternoon there came a transparency into her cheeks, and the crease between her brows melted, leaving a face of great calm, scarcely ruffled by a breath.”
“Sorrow kills slowly, Frank. She will overcome this weakness. Do you remember how she stood on the bridge, scorning danger, when we danced down the river and the Captain was alive?”
“And now!”
“Did you hear her call on her brother in the night? So, I thought, would a spirit call upon its partner sent into the outer darkness. Each cry has taken a year off my life, and my heart is weak now from the pain of it. Do you think that my sister also will call like that? I have been thinking that if a storm laid the ship on her beam ends, and whipped the masts from her, and called on us to fight for our lives, it would be a relief.”
Frank laid his hand gently on the Lieutenant’s shoulder.
“Let us pluck up spirit and face the storm that is in us. I, too, had a spell of despair last night till I thought of Captain Pardoe and Mr Dixon. Then I was ashamed of myself. I can see Dixon’s face now as he smiled before he stepped down to his living tomb. What do you think they would say to us if they saw us making so poor a return for their lives?”
“You are right, my lad,” said Webster slowly. “We must remember our duty to them.”
“And to our Commodore.”
“Ay; God bless her!”
“That’s right,” continued Hume, with assumed cheerfulness. “Now do you make your reckonings, and we’ll stand away for the nearest port.”
“That will be Ascension,” said Webster, after a pause.
They arrived at Ascension on a blazing hot day, and dropped anchor in the blue waters of the little bay, enclosed, not like Funchal, in a setting of green, but by an arid shore, with a waste of sands stretching back to a lofty, sun-baked hill, on which glowed one solitary spot of green. There was the Convent of Sisters, and thither was Miss Anstrade taken in a slow-moving cart.
Hume and Webster returned to the dirty little town, flanked on the inland side by a series of pits sunk in the sand for the habitation of pigs. Here they sadly arranged for the salvage of the Irene, and her crew shipped home on board a Cape steamer, they themselves remaining till Miss Anstrade was pronounced well enough, when they determined to take her passage on the first homeward-bound passenger boat.
Within the patio of the white-walled convent, where the hot air was cooled by swinging mats and the spray of a fountain, Miss Anstrade, within a week of her arrival, was reclining in a long wickerwork chair, with two young men at her side. She had quickly recovered under the tender hands of the sisters, and was now listening to the plans made for her departure for England. She was dressed in white, with a rich red rose for her only ornament, and a deep pallor in her cheeks from her recent illness, her figure, by contrast with the sun-browned men at her side, looking altogether slight and delicate.
“I understand you are not returning to England; what, then, if I may ask, are your intentions? You surely do not mean to remain on this cinder?”
“Do you remember,” said Hume, “what I told you of the Golden Rock?”
“A long time since, was it not? but I remember it well, and the strange feeling of second sight that came upon me, so that it seemed to me I saw the flash and sparkle of the Rock in a savage land. I weaved a romance about it in that time before—before the world changed to me.”
The two men looked inquiringly at each other, for they had found no romance in the thought of the Rock, only a thought of money.
“Everyone,” she continued, in a dreamy voice, “has a Golden Rock somewhere within the sweep of his horizon—a gleaming spot of brightness that fills them in times of depression with hope of better things. But you have not told me.”
“We have talked it over, and Webster has promised to throw in his lot with me, though I am afraid it will be a fearful loss of time to him.”
“This man has no imagination, Miss Anstrade,” said Webster, with a faint smile; “but as for me, I thoroughly believe in this mountain of gold that awaits us, and look upon my fortune as already made.”
“Ah! yes, it is there; and how happy you will be seeking for it, strong in your friendship and confident in your strength, while I—I must go back to the old life, a prey to my thoughts.” She brought her brows together in a frown, and then leant back in her chair with an air of depression.
“I am afraid,” said Frank slowly, “there’s little romance awaiting us, and little pleasure, for the difficulties are great.”
“Still, you will be together, and the joy of companionship compensates. When do you go?”
“By the first opportunity after you sail, Miss Anstrade.”
“So,” she said, with a sob, “you abandon me—leave me to go back alone among strangers, with my memory!”
“We will return with you, madam, if you wish it; but we could be of no further assistance to you, else, be sure, we would not have thought of our plans.”
“But I have money yet, and could equip another ship.”
“Yes, madam; but the war in Brazil is near its end. The news was brought yesterday. The Government has triumphed.”
“Ah!” She let her hands drop in her lap, and looked straight before her. “And what of my father?”
“Colonel de Anstrade lost his life in the attack upon the Castle, whilst gallantly leading a sortie on the Government troops. He died like a soldier.”
There was a long silence. She made a sign of the Cross, but gave way to no storm of weeping, being dulled by the force of grief. Presently a sister stole to her side, and they withdrew, going back to the little town to await the arrival of the steamer from Cape Town, which was reported due within two days.
Before that time, while they thought of returning for the last time to the convent, a cart drew up before the small hotel, and out of it stepped Miss Anstrade herself.
“You see,” she said, with a wan smile, “I have recovered, and since you have not been to call on me, I have come to you.”
“We were just about setting off, having waited for certain information of the steamer. If the good sisters had allowed it, we would have remained near you all the time.”
“Ay, kept watch and watch without the walls; and every night we strolled to the fort to see the distant light on the Convent Tower. If there was anything amiss with you, the sister agreed to show two lights, when we’d have posted off.”
“So you did not forget me, then?” she said, with one of her old radiant smiles.
“No more than the sailor could forget the lone star by which he steers in the dark night.”
“We have your luggage ready, Miss Anstrade,” said Hume, after handing her to a seat on the balcony, “and we are ready to go with you to England.”
“And the Golden Rock?”
“That can wait a few more months.”
“There may be others in search of it. No, you must lose no time, for success will not wait upon your leisure. Remember,” she said, with a despairing gesture, “how delay marred my plan, leaving me without a comfort or a friend in the world.”
“Are not we your friends?” they said, looking earnestly at her.
“Friends of a day—gone to-morrow—forgotten, and forgetting in a week.”
“You may forget,” murmured Frank; “but we will never.”
She looked at them a moment steadily.
“Women do not forget. Their lives are confined by convention, narrowed often by small duties—the memories they have of things outside their usual limit remain with them always. I will not forget—ah! would to Heaven I could rub out the events of the last month!”
“Would you blot us out also?”
“Why not? I cannot—but if I could, why not? You are passing away into fresh scenes and excitements, where your regrets will vanish and your memories be blurred. But what is then left for me?”
“You are young, Miss Anstrade, and it is not meant that youth should suffer.”
“When do you sail?”
“We sail with you to-morrow.”
“I am not going.”
“What!”
“Yes; I will remain here. There is work in the convent yonder for such as would forget.”
“Good God!” said Webster, staring aghast at the face of the beautiful girl who so calmly talked of throwing her life away.
“You cannot mean it,” said Hume, looking at her steadily. “No; it is impossible. It would be cruel.”
“I astonish you, my friends; and yet, if you consider, it is very reasonable, this step of mine. I have talked with the gentle sisters, and found them steeped in a loving patience that knows no fear of the past and allows no dread of the future. Yet some of them gave up more than I do—brothers, sisters, even lovers.”
“It is horrible! And this island, of all places, with a copper heaven above and an earth of iron below.”
“We can’t allow it,” said Webster gruffly.
“Then take me with you,” she said softly, as she bent forward, with a flush in her cheeks; “take me with you—for you have suffered with me; men have sacrificed their lives for you as for me. Ah! take me too; I could not live alone with these memories.”