“No, Mamma, send me. You know I had the ambulance lessons with Nag,” said Mysie, “and we could get a real nurse from Belfast or Dublin, if it was wanted.”
So it was arranged, and uncle and niece started, but hope faded more and more! Were those two precious young lives so early quenched?
CHAPTER XXXI—THE WRECK
“How purer were earth, if all its martyrdoms,
If all its struggling sighs of sacrifice
Were swept away!”E. Hamilton King.
No tidings of Bernard and Angela. The suspense began to diminish into “wanhope” or despair; and the brothers and sisters continued to say that they were sorry above all for Phyllis, whose gentle sweetness had made her one with them.
But at last, one forenoon, a telegram was put into Clement’s hand, dated from Ewmouth:
Muriel Ellen, Ewmouth Harbour, October 14th. Blaine to Rev. Underwood. Brother here. Come to infirmary.
Clement and Geraldine lost no time in driving to the infirmary, too anxious to speak to one another. Blaine’s name was known to them as a Gwenworth lad, who had gone to sea, and risen to be sailing master of the Muriel Ellen, a trader plying between Londonderry and Bristol. He, with another, who proved to be the American captain of the Afra, were at the gate of the hospital, where an ambulance had just entered.
“Oh! Sir,” as Clement held out his hand, “I could not save her. I’d have given my life!”
“My brother?” as Clement returned his grasp fervently.