It was horrible! She could not look at the sea—it made her mad. She could only look skywards, and try to find a break in the dun clouds; or else over to the horizon, to see something—ever so faint and small a something—breaking the line of water and sky.
The men on board apparently knew Mr. Dugdale, and he them. They worked with a respectful solemnity, as if aware of their sad errand. The boat was a little steam-tug, and she cut her way over the heavy seas like a bird. Two men, and Marmaduke, kept watch constantly with the glass, shorewards and seawards. Sometimes they went so far out that the hazy coast-line almost vanished, and then again they ran in-shore under the gigantic cliffs that lock the south of England coast.
Hour after hour, the poor wife remained on deck, sometimes walking about restlessly, sometimes lying wrapped in sails and rugs, her face turned seaward in a dumb hopelessness that was more piteous than any moans. The seamen, if they happened to come near, looked at her with a sort of awe, mingled with that compassionate gentleness which sailors almost always show towards women. More than once, great rough hands brought her food, or put to use half-a-dozen clever nautical contrivances for the sheltering of “the poor lady.”
Late at night she went down below; by daybreak she was on deck again. She found Mr. Dugdale in his old place by the compass and the telescope. He had slept by snatches where he sat, never giving up his watch for a single hour.
“E—h!” he said, when she came and touched him. “I was dreaming of the Missus and the little ones at home!”
“Do you want to go home?”
“No—no!—not while there's a hope. Keep heart, my child!”
But they looked at each other's faces in the dawn, and saw how pale and disconsolate both were. And still the little lonely boat kept rocking over the sea—the pitiless sea, that returned neither answer nor sign.
Another day—another night: just the same. Once or twice they came on the track of some vessel; a ship outward or homeward bound, and told their story; shouting it out, in brief business-like words—how horrible they sounded! And the ship's people would be seen to come to her side, stand a while looking at the melancholy little steamer on its hopeless search—then pass on. All the world seemed passing on slowly, slowly—leaving them to that blank sea and sky, and to their own despair.
On the evening of the third day, Marmaduke, who had kept aloof for several hours, came and stood by his sister-in-law. She was leaning at the stern, looking shorewards at two columns of rock, which the watery wear of ages had parted from the cliffs, leaving them set upright in the sea, a little distance from one another, with the breakers boiling between.