Coming back, Duke attempted not to talk to her, but stood by her side—she would stand—sometimes feeling at her damp shawl, or wrapping her up in the tender careful fashion that he used to his own little ones. At last the great fiery eye, accompanied by the iron beast's snorting gasps, appeared far in the dark. Agatha drew a long breath, like a sob.
Mr. Dugdale lifted her in the carriage, almost without a word. One of the railway-men brought from somewhere—nobody ever learned where—a rug for her feet, and a pillow for her head to lean on. A minute more, and they were whirled away.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Every one knows that story, perhaps the most terrible of its kind for many years—and Heaven grant! for many more to come—when a noble ship, with her full complement of human beings, fought at once with winds, and waves, and fire, until came down upon it, and upon all the homes which that one hour desolated, the certain doom. One shudders even at writing of such things, save that they must of necessity happen, and not rarely. But for one such tale as that of the Amazon, which convulses a whole kingdom with horror, there must be many unknown chronicles of equal dread, save that the little vessel sinks unnoticed into its sea grave, and the destruction carried with it passes not beyond its own immediate sphere. Such was the case with the Ardente.
When the train neared Southampton it was already bright morning. Everybody was moving about on the solid, safe, sunshiny earth—nobody thought of shipwrecks and disasters at sea. Many a one looked lazily at the glittering Southampton-water; no one dreamed how, far beyond the curving line of horizon, human beings—husbands and brothers—might be floating about without food or water, frozen, thirsting, dying or dead, under the same sunny sky.
Passing the spot where the wide reach of bay opens, Marmaduke quickly drew down the carriage-blind. He would not for worlds that the poor Agatha should look at that merry-glancing, cruel sea. She seemed to notice the movement, and stirred from the corner where she had sat during all the journey, motionless, save for her perpetually open eyes.
“How light it is! quite morning!”
Marmaduke turned, felt her pulse, and began softly chafing her cold hand.
“Don't, now,” she said piteously. “Don't be kind to me—please don't! Talk a little. Tell me what you think it best to do first.”