Others had watched the young couple sitting so close together on the poop that morning, and guessed what was going on. Others had seen Richard Egerton bending lower and lower over his pretty fellow-passenger, and gazing into her eyes as though he would read her very soul, as he whispered his hopes to her. The poor young fellow had been very modest over it, but he had made so sure that Amy Herbert’s looks and actions could not have deceived him, that he had almost thanked her beforehand for the answer he expected to receive. And she had listened to his proposal with well-feigned surprise, and rejected it with ill-advised haste. She had thought in her silly, girlish inexperience that it was more correct and womanly to appear horrified at the first idea of marriage, and she had been almost as despairing as himself as she saw Richard Egerton take her at her word and turn away without a second appeal, to hide his wounded pride below. She was deeply repenting her abrupt dismissal of him as she flirted on the poop with Captain Barrington, who was returning from leave to join his regiment in Barbadoes. But how was poor Egerton to know that, as he cast himself dejectedly upon his narrow berth and lay, face downwards, with his eyes pressed upon the pillow, lest the hot tears that scorched them should overflow and betray his weakness? The sound of her voice tortured him. He believed that she must be in earnest in showing a preference for Captain Barrington, and he was not yet strong enough to watch her fair face smiling on another man. So he delivered himself over to melancholy, and tried hard to believe that he would not have things other than they were.
‘Whatever is, is best,’ he kept on repeating inwardly. ‘It will not do for me to preach a lesson to another man that I am unable to apply to myself. Besides, it is true. I know it to be so. My whole existence has proved it hitherto.’
Yet the smiling, sunlit pastures and cane fields, to which he was taking his way, and which had seemed so beautiful in prospect when he had hoped to secure fair Amy Herbert to reign over them as mistress, appeared to afford him but dull anticipation now.
‘How shall I ever get through the work?’ he thought, ‘and my heavy heart and sluggish spirit will lay me open to the worst influences of the country. But I will not despair. My wants and my weakness are not unknown, and a way will be found for me even out of this “Slough of Despond.”’
He was suddenly roused from his love-sick reverie by the sound of a low moaning, which seemed to pervade the surrounding atmosphere. Starting up on his couch, Egerton now perceived through the porthole that the sky had become dark, and the noise of the captain of the vessel shouting his orders through a speaking-trumpet, and the sailors rushing about to execute them, made him aware that something was wrong. He was not the man to keep out of the way of danger. Brave as a lion and intrepid as an eagle, Richard Egerton, from a boy, had ever been the foremost in any emergency or danger. Now, as the warning sounds reached his ear, he rushed at once on deck. He remembered ‘Old Contrairy’s’ prophecy of a squall, and his first thoughts were for the comfort and safety of Miss Herbert. But as he issued from the passengers’ saloon a fearful sight awaited him. One of those sudden hurricanes, for which the West Indies are famous, and which will sometimes swamp the stoutest vessel in the course of a few seconds, had arisen, and the whole ship’s company was in confusion. As Egerton sprang upon deck he could distinctly see what appeared to be a black wall of water advancing steadily to meet the unfortunate ‘Star of the North.’ With the exception of the noise consequent on attempting to furl the sails in time to receive the shock of the approaching storm, there was but little tumult upon deck, for everyone seemed paralysed with terror.
At the first alarm, Miss Herbert, with the remainder of the passengers from the poop, had attempted to go below, but, having reached the quarter-deck, was crouching at the foot of the companion-ladder, too terrified by the violence of the tornado to proceed further. As for Egerton, he had to hold on fast to the bulwarks to prevent himself being washed overboard. His head was bare, and as he stood there, with the wind blowing his curls about in the wildest disorder, and his handsome face knit with anxiety and pain, Amy Herbert looked up and saw him, and registered a vow, in the midst of her alarm, that if they ever came safely out of that fearful storm she would humble her pride before him and confess that she had been in the wrong. The moaning of the tempest increased to a stunning roar, and then the huge wall of water broke upon the ‘Star of the North’ with a violence to which no thunder can bear comparison.
All hands were aghast, and the men were dashed about the deck hither and thither as the wind caught the vessel on her broadside. The awful noise of the hurricane rendered all communication by speech impossible, but the captain, by setting the example, stimulated his men to cut away the masts in order to right the ship, which had been thrown almost on her beam-ends.
In a moment Egerton perceived the danger to which Amy Herbert would be exposed by the fall of the crashing timber. She was crouching in the most exposed part of the quarter-deck, her lovely eyes raised upwards, full of the wildest fear.
‘There! there! Go there!’ he exclaimed frantically, though his voice had no power to reach her, as he pointed to a more sheltered position under the companion-ladder. ‘Get under there, for Heaven’s sake!’
She saw the warning gesture of his hand, the agony depicted in his face, and understood the meaning of them, just as the huge mast bowed itself towards the sea. Egerton continued his efforts to make her see the necessity of moving, and she was just about to take advantage of the hint, when Captain Barrington crawled on all fours into the place himself. The little man was not too brave by nature, and fear had driven all thoughts of chivalry out of his head. For the moment the girl did not see who had forestalled her intention; she only perceived that she had lost her chance of safety, and waited the event in trembling anxiety. Down came the topmast with a crashing shock that threatened to sink the vessel. Yet Amy Herbert was sheltered from possible injury, for, with a mighty effort, Richard Egerton had quitted his stronghold and flung his body upon the deck before her. For one moment he was conscious—happily conscious—that she was safe, and he had saved her; the next, he had fainted from a blow on the head and the pain of a large splinter of wood that had been broken from the falling mast and driven with violence into his arm. He did not hear the scream with which Amy Herbert viewed the accident, nor see the agonised face which bent above his prostrate form. He heard, and saw, and knew nothing, until he opened his eyes in his own cabin and perceived, with the dazed wonder of returning consciousness, that the old sailor, Williams, and the ship’s doctor, Mr French, were bending over him.