“I have something to ask you, sir, before—I—die!” Her voice failed her on the last words, and he had to wait a little before she gained strength enough to go on. “Will you promise that, when the breath has gone out of my body, you will let me lie here, in the open air, and with your cloak over me, till the morning? Nay, sure, sir,” she went on feebly, as Tregenna would have spoken, “you can’t refuse me so small a boon!”
She clutched at his hand as she spoke, and held it with a convulsive grip, as he answered her.
“You shall stay here, if you please,” said he. “But do not give way. You are young, and strong: you will live yet, I doubt not. I can see no wound upon you that should lead to your death!”
“None the less,” said she, as she tried to shake her head, “I shall die. And I am glad of it, since my body, in death, shall lie where I would have it lie, in Heaven’s sweet air, and on your ship, yours.” She pronounced the last word with inexpressible tenderness, and turned upon him, as she spoke, a look so moving, so piercing in its wistfulness, that the tears sprang to Tregenna’s eyes.
“Kiss me,” said she quickly. “Kiss me, once, kiss me twice, and thrice—before I die!”
As she uttered these words, in a hoarse and broken voice, she strove to raise herself, and lifted her white and eager face to his.
He obeyed her, kissing her three times, not with the feeling that it was a dying woman whose lips touched his, but with a horrible, uncanny sense of contact with some being that was not honest flesh and blood. It seemed to him that her dry lips burned, seared his, as if he had been touched by red-hot coals.
It was with difficulty that he repressed a shudder as she let him go. She fixed upon him her dark gray eyes, to which the black lines sunk beneath gave a strange brilliancy; then suddenly her head fell forward upon his breast and she lay limp and motionless in his arms.
He laid her down, looked long at the white face, fixed and ghastly in the moonlight. Then he felt himself seized once more with that sick horror which had taken possession of him once before that evening. As he turned his head away, the boatswain came up, and looked curiously down at the prostrate body.
“Why, sir, he’s dead!” cried he.