CHAPTER XXIII.
Waiting
he long, long, weary night gave way to a gray and gloomy dawn. The tempest had not abated, and the sea thundered as furiously as ever. The wet and shivering women had gone back to their houses and their little ones; and as the cold, steely light of the coming day began to whiten in the east, Hagar made her way back to her kitchen, where she kindled a fire to warm her numb limbs. Never more, she thought,—rocking to and fro before the pleasant blaze,—could the old house be bright or cheerful. The sea had quenched its life and its joy, and never again would the merry voice echo in the great rooms, or the quick, eager steps sound along the hall and in at her kitchen-door.
"O good, bressed Lord!" moaned she, "bress yer poor chil'en dat's lef' behind! 'Pears like dey was jes' ready ter fall down an' faint ter def ef ye didn't hold 'em up. O Lord, keep Hagar up, an' 'vent her from 'strustin' ye! Bress us, Lord, fur we ain't nuffin dis yer time. Ye's all we hab ter hold on ter."
Meanwhile, Trafford and the fishermen lingered on the shore, waiting for the sea to give up its dead. The east grew whiter, and light broke dimly over the waste of waves, and faintly showed them where the "Gull" had struck. There was not much left of the little craft,—only a few timbers and the taper point of a mast, wedged in between some outlying rocks, which the sea thundered over. It was a dreary sight,—the vast, immeasurable waste lashed into foam, and dimly discerned through the gray gleaming of the dawn, with the bit of wreck swaying in the wares, where those lives had gone out in the awful thunder and darkness; but Trafford gazed upon it with a calm face. Groans and lamentation could not express the agony which rent his heart, and he walked up and down the drenched sand with a calm, white face that awed Dirk whenever he looked upon it.
"It be a heavier stroke for the master an' we ken tell, lads," he said to his comrades, as they kept keen lookout for the poor bodies which the sea still kept.
"Ay, there be a heart within him like the rest of us," said one of the fishermen, looking at Trafford as he kept his watchful vigil; "an' he be only losin' what we hev lost afore."
"But the lad wur not like ours," said Dirk, pityingly, "an' it wur a finer lad an' ever I see afore."