But there was light enough to show Harry that he was standing in a place whose floor was of muddy shingle stones, with a plank laid down the centre, worn and furrowed by the long coursing to and fro upon it of the iron keel of some boat. A few broken oars and a small skiff’s mast were leaned against the side in company with a boathook and a rude pole. Upon a peg hard by was a coil of rope and a grapnel; and again, in other parts, coils of rope and four-fluked, sharp-pointed grapnels, which made the visitor shudder as he thought of their purpose. Pieces of old iron, fragments of chain, scraps of rope, a ragged old ship’s fender, and some pieces of drift wood, muddy, sodden, and jagged with old red water-corroded nails, were all that remained to take his attention, as his eyes wandered round the place, studiously avoiding and leaving to the last that which he had expressly come to see.
Oars, boathook, mast, cordage, they were all there, but where was the boat’s sail? It was not in the boat—that he had seen when outside with the men.
Harry Clayton felt as if his mind were divided, and one portion were set in array against the other, questioning and responding, for the response was plain enough, and he knew that answer, though he had not seen that sail—could not see it now.
As he stood gazing upon the faint rays streaming down from between two loose tiles, falling here straight, there aslant, but all to cross and form a curious network of light with the rays pouring in from the side, he told himself that he was a coward; but the defensive part of his intelligence whispered in return, had this been the body of a stranger lying at his feet he could have calmly and sadly gazed upon the dead. But it was the dread of looking upon his friend—upon the man whom of late, but for a hard battle with self, he could have struck down as an enemy—to look upon him cut off in the flower of his youth, and by some dreadful death, in the midst of a wild freak, perhaps of dissipation.
Clayton paused, and he repeated these words—
“Had it been the body of a stranger!”
Then, as if a flash of light had illumined the meaning of those words, he started. “Had it been the body of a stranger!” Why, after all, might it not be the earthly clay of some one unknown. It would be horrible still; but if he could bear back the tidings to that stricken old man that Lionel might still be living—that this was not he—how he could fervently say, “Thank Heaven!”
He stepped forward to where an old patched sail lay covering something in a pool of mud and water. The sailcloth was stained and dabbled with the mud; and a strange sense of shrinking seized upon Clayton as he stooped to lift one end.
He knew which to lift, for through the bare old cloth the human form could plainly be distinguished. It was not much to do to raise that cloth at the end for a brief moment. He could recognise Lionel in an instant; and nerving himself once more, he stooped hastily, raised the covering, and dropped it again, to mutter—nay, to exclaim loudly, with a fervour of tone that bespoke the intensity of the speaker’s feelings—“Thank God!”
Harry turned hastily away, and forced open the door to admit the light of day, and to confront the bearer of the tidings and his mate; for his glance had been but a momentary one. He had stood at the back, as he raised the sail, and in that moment’s glance he had seen no horrors—none of the distortions left sometimes by a fearful death; he had seen but one thing, and that was—