As the sailorman yelled again and again, in his wild impatience, the old woman only wailed. Suddenly the stricken sailor stared aghast. “Is she dead?” came his husky query. For what else but the death of his beautiful Waylao could make this terrible silence and that terrible look in the eyes of his native wife? Ah! reader, you know all, but Benbow, the British sailor who had left his daughter in the care of his wife, knew nothing.
“She’s gone, Benbow; she go run away into forest, days and weeks ago!”
“Gone!” that was all the skipper could say as he stared at the woman and stamped his foot.
“Some man deceive our pretty Wayee—she like THAT! She run! She run! O ze great white Gods helps us!”
Old Lydia wailed out the foregoing information, and looked into the haggard face of the white man, trembling the while like a dead leaf.
For a moment he stared like an idiot. Then he passed his hand across his brow.
“Gone? Like what?” came his response in a clash of thunderous passion. It sounded like the voice of doom to the native woman’s ears as the sailor yelled forth his inquiry.
The shellbacks, who were all huddled by the grog shanty door, heard that yell. They shivered as they looked into one another’s awestruck, staring eyes.
“Gawd blimey! to fink that oive lived to see this ’ere day!” murmured Grimes as the huddled shellbacks breathed heavily, swayed in their sea-boots and listened.
When Lydia had at length told her husband all that she could tell, and dared tell, she clung to his knees.