“But Heaven of Heavens! there is no time—not an instant of time for persuasion! The ship is sinking, I tell you!” he cried, breathing hard.
“Then I will sink with—the ship,” she persisted.
“But why? oh, why?” he demanded, quickly, scarcely able all the while to keep his hands off her. “Why? why?” he pleaded. Perhaps he hoped that in this last awful hour she would give him a supreme proof of love, and say that she was resolved to stay to share his fate. And perhaps “to share his fate” was her strongest motive for wishing to remain on the wreck; but if so, she gave a weaker one; she said:
“Because I would rather at once sink with the ship, and meet a quick and easy death, than take the chance of life amid the horrors of the lifeboats. I will stay here, and wait my fate.”
“Then, before Heaven, I will not permit you to do so! You are mine by the right of the strongest love man ever felt for woman, and I will dispose of my own as I please,” he exclaimed, throwing his arms around her, and lifting her up as easily as a child would lift a kitten. He bore her down to the starboard gangway, from which the last lifeboat was just putting off.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Men! seamen! some of you help to lower her down! Some of you take her as I let her go! Riordan!—Mullony!—hold up your arms!”
“Bedad, and meself will do that same! Let her go!” exclaimed Mike, standing up in the boat, and spreading his arms, to receive the form that Justin was preparing to lower down.
Too proud, or too fragile to struggle with superior force, up to this instant Britomarte had been quiet enough; but now, as he was letting her go, she turned with a half-suppressed cry and clung to his breast. But he tore her away from that hold, and dropped her into the strong arms of Mike Mullony. And then, stepping back upon the deck, he waved his hand for them to push off.
But oh! what a cry of unspeakable anguish came up from that boat, as Britomarte started to her feet, and stretched forth her arms yearningly, longingly toward him, exclaiming:
“Justin! With you! Take me! My beloved! my beloved!”