"I don't rightly know about it," said she, sorrowfully. "What is the pilot-boat?"
They told her, and she gathered the meaning out of the sailors' slang which enveloped it. There was a hope still, although so slight and faint.
"How far does the pilot go with the ship?"
To different distances they said. Some pilots would go as far as Holyhead for the chance of the homeward-bound vessels; others only took the ships over the Banks. Some captains were more cautious than others, and the pilots had different ways. The wind was against the homeward bound vessels, so perhaps the pilot aboard the John Cropper would not care to go far out.
"How soon would he come back?"
There were three boatmen, and three opinions, varying from twelve hours to two days. Nay, the man who gave his vote for the longest time, on having his judgment disputed, grew stubborn, and doubled the time, and thought it might be the end of the week before the pilot-boat came home.
They began disputing, and urging reasons; and Mary tried to understand them; but independently of their nautical language, a veil seemed drawn over her mind, and she had no clear perception of any thing that passed. Her very words seemed not her own, and beyond her power of control, for she found herself speaking quite differently to what she meant.
One by one her hopes had fallen away, and left her desolate; and though a chance yet remained, she could no longer hope. She felt certain it, too, would fade and vanish. She sank into a kind of stupor. All outward objects harmonised with her despair.
The gloomy leaden sky,—the deep, dark waters below, of a still heavier shade of colour,—the cold, flat yellow shore in the distance, which no ray lightened up,—the nipping, cutting wind.
She shivered with her depression of mind and body.