“Yes,” he said, “if—anything went wrong—he told me I was to come here to Mrs. Hastings.”
Agatha turned her head away, but Mrs. Hastings saw that she caught her breath before she cried:
“Then something has gone wrong!”
“About as wrong as it could.” Dampier met her gaze gravely. “Wyllard and two other men are drowned.”
He paused as if watching for words that might soften the dire meaning of his message, and Mrs. Hastings saw Agatha shiver. The girl turned slowly around with a drawn white face. It was, however, Hastings who spoke, almost sternly.
“Go on,” he said.
“I’m to tell you all?”
This time it was Agatha who broke in.
“Yes,” she replied, with a steadiness that struck the others as being strained and unnatural, “you must tell us all.”
Dampier, who appeared to shrink from his task, began awkwardly, but he gained coherence and force of expression as he proceeded. He made them understand something of the grim resolution which had animated Wyllard. He pictured, in terse seaman’s words, the little schooner plunging to windward over long phalanxes of icy seas, or crawling white with snow through the blinding fog. His listeners saw the big combers tumbling ready to break short upon the dipping bows, and half-frozen men struggling for dear life with folds of madly thrashing sail. The pictures were necessarily somewhat blurred and hazy, for after all only an epic poet could fittingly describe the things that must be done and borne at sea, and epic poets are not bred in the forecastle. When he reached the last scene he gained dramatic power, and Agatha’s face grew white and tense. She saw the dim figures pulling the boat through the flying spray beneath the wall of ice.