That a dark ‘Perhaps’ lay straight and immediately before them, became at each moment more plain. The continued firing of guns gave token that other vessels were in the same plight as the Princess—once, indeed, a steamer drifted so close that they could see the faint reflection of her signal lamps, could hear the beating of her gong. The dreary sound of the fog-horn, the muffled tramp of the men on watch, the lights burning aloft in the ship’s rigging, the partially lowered boats, the solemn faces of the skipper and the crew, all combined into one unspoken word—Danger.
CHAPTER XXXIV DEAD ROSE PETALS
Dinah Arbuthnot thought over the few quarrels, the many misunderstandings of her married life, grown little, all, before the hour’s largeness. She thought how, in five or six minutes more—a collision, in weather like this, would be over briefly—in five or six minutes more she and Gaston might be parted, with never another kiss from his lips to hers. He would cherish the thought of her to his last breath, if she were lost to-night. She recognised the true metal in the man, was sure enough of that. Possibly, the remembrance of her, calm and untroubled in her grave, might prove a stronger influence over him for good, a keener stimulus to his genius, than her restless, jealous life had ever been!
On such terms, she asked herself, was death a thing to be met with craven fear?
Most of the party, obeying simple bodily wretchedness, crept, one after another, below—poor frightened, frozen Mrs. Verschoyle at length confessing that she would sooner be drowned comfortably in the cabin than stand up longer against the sickening roll of the anchored vessel on deck. Marjorie Bartrand, Dinah, and Miss Tighe lingered, Lord Rex and Geoffrey Arbuthnot (forced into comradeship for once) keeping up their spirits with cheerful talk, with stories well remembered or well invented, until a pale forecast of daylight began slowly, uncertainly, to filter through the fog. Then came a new untoward event to crown this night of misfortune. A lad on the forecastle had stumbled in the darkness over a coil of chain, and a cry quickly arose that the surgeon’s hand was wanted. The poor fellow lay in agony, with a twisted or broken ankle. Was there not some doctor on board among the gentlemen who could help him?
Away sped Geoffrey Arbuthnot on the instant, bestowing no consolatory word—Marjorie’s heart honoured him for the omission—on the ladies thus abandoned to their terrors and their fate.
‘And now,’ said old Cassandra Tighe, hollow and far-away her voice sounded through the blanket of fog, ‘I think we women folk will do well to betake ourselves elsewhere. Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot has set us an example of duty. You have been a pattern host,’ she added, addressing Lord Rex, ‘and it is right you should be set free. We must take our chance with the others in the cabin. You hear me, Marjorie Bartrand?’
Marjorie heard, but was stoutly recalcitrant. It was her duty, she said, to die hard, and according to Act of Parliament. She would in no wise give up her chance of the boats, should a collision befall the Princess; could swim like a sea-gull if the worst came to the worst. Lord Rex, of course, must be considered off duty. For herself, if Mrs. Arbuthnot would stay with her under one of the covered seats, she asked nothing better than to stop on deck and watch for sunrise. Cold? How would it be possible to take cold at midsummer—swathed, too, in all these wraps, and with the excitement of a first-class adventure to maintain the circulation of one’s blood.