“Tell me about your escape, love,” he said, patting her hand with his thin fingers. “You don’t know what I’ve suffered. I was waiting at the Royal Hotel here, when the cable came announcing the loss of the Zanzibar and all on board. For the first time for many a year I drank spirits to drown my grief—don’t be afraid, dear—for the first time and the last. Then afterwards came another cable giving the names of those who were known to be saved, and—thank God, oh! thank God—yours among them,” and he gasped at the recollection of that relief.
“Yes,” she said; “I suppose I should thank—Him—and another. Have you heard the story about—how Mr. Seymour saved me, I mean?”
“Some of it. While you were dressing yourself, I have been talking to the officer who was in command of your boat. He was a brave man, Benita, and I am sorry to tell you he is gone.”
She grasped a stanchion and clung there, staring at him with a wild, white face.
“How do you know that, Father?”
Mr. Clifford drew a copy of the Natal Mercury of the previous day from the pocket of his ulster, and while she waited in an agony he hunted through the long columns descriptive of the loss of the Zanzibar. Presently he came to the paragraph he sought, and read it aloud to her. It ran:
“The searchers on the coast opposite the scene of the shipwreck report that they met a Kaffir who was travelling along the seashore, who produced a gold watch which he said he had taken from the body of a white man that he found lying on the sand at the mouth of the Umvoli River. Inside the watch is engraved, ‘To Seymour Robert Seymour, from his uncle, on his twenty-first birthday.’ The name of Mr. Seymour appears as a first-class passenger to Durban by the Zanzibar. He was a member of an old English family in Lincolnshire. This was his second journey to South Africa, which he visited some years ago with his brother on a big-game shooting expedition. All who knew him then will join with us in deploring his loss. Mr. Seymour was a noted shot and an English gentleman of the best stamp. He was last seen by one of the survivors of the catastrophe, carrying Miss Clifford, the daughter of the well-known Natal pioneer of that name, into a boat, but as this young lady is reported to have been saved, and as he entered the boat with her, no explanation is yet forthcoming as to how he came to his sad end.”
“I fear that is clear enough,” said Mr. Clifford, as he folded up his paper.
“Yes, clear enough,” she repeated in a strained voice. “And yet—yet—oh! Father, he had just asked me to marry him, and I can’t believe that he is dead before I had time to answer.”
“Good Heavens!” said the old man, “they never told me that. It is dreadfully sad. God help you, my poor child! There is nothing more to say except that he was only one among three hundred who have gone with him. Be brave now, before all these people. Look—here comes the tug.”