“Lie down!” he screamed. “What’s death to you! I ain’t going to stop! I never could abide the sight of it!”
And with the word he was pulling furiously away.
We still shrieked to him vainly. We ran up and down the sand. For the moment I felt quite blind and delirious.
All was of no avail. Yard by yard the boat drew away into the thickening mist; grew dim and dimmer, a phantom of itself; and, while still the thump of its rowlocks drummed thickly into our ears, vanished and was gone.
And then at last we came together, and, halting, looked into one another’s pallid faces like dead souls meeting on the banks of Styx.
CHAPTER X.
THE DARKEST HOUR.
The memory of that awful time is soothed and assuaged to me by virtue of the strong soul who, under Providence, was given to us to command it. If destiny had used him its instrument to precipitate the tragedy, long, I am sure, hanging over our heads, it had done so consciously, by higher command, in order to neutralize the effects of its own inexorable decree. So thought Mr. Sant presently; and gratefully we acquiesced, giving thanks to Providence. Like children, we had played with fire, not realizing, nor, I think, deserving the consequences. All honour, then, after God, to His little self-possessed deputy, who of his confidence and resolution helped us to the nerve to escape them.
For a time Harry and I—I may surely admit it without shame—were beside ourselves. To be thus cast away and abandoned on a sandbank in mid-ocean—for to all appearances, and intents and purposes, our fate seemed nothing less—it was horrible beyond words. An hour—perhaps two hours—and a lingering death must overtake us. Already—we could see by the near lines of foam, could gather from the changed whisper of the tide—the seaward surges were freshening to their return. We hurried to and fro, wringing our hands, crying for impossible help, never once in our distraction holding escape as conceivable save by external agency. The bank on which we stood stretched north and south, a sleek, hateful mockery. It were useless to traverse it up and down; yet we went, as if to hurry this way and that over it were to summon of our agonized need a causeway to the unseen shore five miles distant; we went, until the terror of ranging adrift, beyond recovery, from our one hope of resource, already grown a desolate phantom behind us in the mist, sent us frantically back to the side of the motionless figure, which had not once stirred since we parted from it raving.
“Mr. Pilbrow!” I cried. “What are we to do?”
“Ah!” he answered, sharp as an echo: “to command yourselves!”