"Silas! Silas!" the little lad shrieked.
But Silas sank down; and ever down: lower and lower beneath the translucent waters, the vast flood deepening its tint above him, till at last he was hopelessly buried out of sight.
When John Penberthy heard the terrible news he took the blow as a man might take a sentence of death—in grim silence, and with a sullen despair which nothing might henceforth banish or relieve. The roof-tree of his hopes was broken irretrievably, and he gazed down blankly at the ruin around his feet.
About three days after Silas was drowned, John was one afternoon out fishing for bait, and happened to be keeping rather close to the cliff-line, when he perceived a little seal emerge from a zawn[M] and come swimming, as with a settled purpose, towards the boat.
There was something so melancholy and so pathetically human in the soft, liquid eyes of the animal, that John felt his heart touched unaccountably.
Forgetting the line, which he was just about to draw in, he sat staring at the seal with a fixed intensity, as if he were looking in the familiar eyes of some one with whom he had a world of memories to interchange.
And, meanwhile, the seal swam straight up to him, till it was so close to the boat that he could touch it with his hand.
John leaned over and looked straight at the animal: fixing his eyes hungrily on the eyes of the seal.
"Why dedn'ee ha' me christened, faather?" asked the little seal, piteously.