“Enough, my husband!” she exclaimed, and throwing her arms around him, she turned again to her father, a glow of holy triumph tinging her pallid cheek. “And wouldst thou tempt him to perjury for my sake? On, no, no! father, beloved, revered, from the first hour I could lisp thy name, oh, pardon me this first disobedience to thy will! Did I linger, how might I save thee from remorse; when each day, each hour, thou wouldst see me fade beneath the whelming weight of perjury and falsity? No, no! Bless me, oh, bless me, ere I go, and the prayers of thy child shall rise each hour for thee!”
Again she knelt before him, and Castello, inexpressibly affected, felt he dared urge no more. How might he agonize that heart; when in neither word, nor hint, nor sign did she utter reproach on him? Again and again he reiterated blessings on her sainted head; and when he could release her from his embrace, it was to secure their speedy passage in the vessel, which his command had detained in her moorings; though the hope that he should once more look upon his child had well-nigh faded ere she came.
The exiles stood upon the deck. A hundred other of the miserable fugitives had found a refuge in this same vessel, whose captain, somewhat more humane than many of his fellows, and richly bribed by Castello, set food before the famishing wanderers directly they had weighed anchor. But even the cravings of nature were lost in the one feeling, that they gazed for the last time on the land they loved. There were dark thunder-clouds sweeping over the sky, mingled with others of brilliant colouring, that proclaimed the hour of sunset. The ocean-horizon seemed buried in murky gloom; but the shores of Spain stood forth bathed in a glow of warm red light, as if to bid the unhappy wanderers farewell in unrivalled brilliance. For awhile there was silence on the vessel, so deep, so unbroken, that the flapping of the sails against the masts was alone distinguishable. It was then a wild and wailing strain burst simultaneously from the fugitives; the young and the old, the strong man and exhausted female, joined almost unconsciously. In the language of Jerusalem they chanted forth their wild farewell, which may thus be rendered in English verse.
Farewell! farewell! we wander forth,
Doom’d by th’ Eternal’s awful wrath;
With nought to bless our lonely path,
Across the stormy wave.
Cast forth as wanderers on the earth;
Torn from the land that hailed our birth,
From childhood’s cot, from manhood’s hearth,