“I am so sorry not to have heard your account—the most interesting account, my brother tells me—of your late journey,” began she; “and really, though the recital must bring back very acute pain, I am selfish enough to ask you to brave it.”
“I am more than repaid for all, Miss Courtenay, in the kind interest you vouchsafe to bestow on me.”
After which she smiled graciously, and seemed a little—a very little—flurried, as though the speech savoured of gallantry, and then, with a regained serenity, she went on, “You narrowly escaped shipwreck, I think?”
“So narrowly, that I believe every varying emotion that can herald in the sad catastrophe passed through me, and I felt every pang, except the last of all.”
“How dreadful! Where did it happen?”
“Off the west coast of Ireland, Miss Courtenay. Off what mariners declare to be the most perilous lee-shore in Europe, if not in the world; and in an open boat too, at least but half decked, and on a day of such storm that, except ourselves and the unlucky yawl that was lost, not another sail was to be seen.”
“And were the crew lost?”
“No; it was in saving them, as they chung to the floating spars, that we were so near perishing ourselves.”
“But you did save them?”
“Every one. It was a daring act; so daring that, landsman as I was, I deemed it almost foolhardy. Indeed, our crew at first resisted, and wouldn’t do it.”