Shamed out of his superstitious fear, Sam reluctantly obeyed the injunction of his mistress. He waded carefully and timidly along, until he could lay hold of the bodies, and drag them to shore.
"W'ite man and nigger, Missus," he said, solemnly, as the movement through the water revealed the pale features of the one, and the woolly head of the other. "De w'ite man, I dun-know[#] who he is, he look like sailor; and de nigger--" He had now drawn them ashore, and examined their features. It would have made any one's heart sad to hear the groan that came from the poor fellow, when he had looked steadily into the face of the dead man. He staggered, fell on his knees in the water, embraced the wet body, and kissed it.
[#] Dun-know, don't know.
"O my Missus," he cried, "it is Peter! my own brudder Peter! De only brudder I got in dis wide wull. O Peter--Peter!" and he wept like a child.
"Draw them out, Sam," said Mary, energetically; "draw them on high ground, and let us rub them as we rubbed you. There may be life in them yet."
"No, Missus," he replied, pulling the bodies higher ashore. "No life here. He cold--he stiff--he dead. O Peter, my brudder, I glad to meet you once mo'. Huddee[#] Peter! Huddee boy!" The poor fellow actually shook hands with the corpse, and poured out afresh his unaffected sorrows.
[#] Howdye.
As soon as the bodies were drawn sufficiently from the water, Mary proceeded to examine them. The face of the white man was unknown to her, he appeared to have been a respectable sailor. He and Peter were evidently stiff dead. She was so certain they were beyond all hope of recovery, that she did not even require their clothes to be unloosed, or any means to be used for their restoration. She waited on the mourning brother until the first burst of his grief was over, then she and Frank aided him to make a sort of brush wood fence around the bodies, to protect them until something could be done for their interment.
It was while they were engaged in this last duty that Robert and Harold passed the point. Their halloo might, under ordinary circumstances, have been heard; but with their own occupation of mind, the rustle of bushes dragged along, and the roar of the distant surf, the voices of the boatmen sounded in vain.
From the point the boys proceeded, it was said, to the other side of the river, to escape the waves that dashed heavily against the island. The whole marsh, from bluff to bluff, was one flood of water, with the exception of patches of the more luxuriant herbage that peered above the rolling surface. The mangroves, though generally immersed, broke so completely the violence of the waves, that the water above and around them, was comparatively smooth, while in the channel of the river it was too rough for safety.