All that he had felt at early dawn, when he first looked abroad upon the seas and found her not, now came back to him,—all the self-reproach, all the remorse, all the anguish of soul.
He stood at the helm, and let the Antelope pass onward, but there was no longer any hope in his mind. He was overwhelmed, and now even the possibility of finding her seemed to be taken away.
All this time the wind had gone on increasing in violence, and the sea had risen more and more. For himself and for the Antelope Captain Corbet did not care; but the lowery sky and the stormy sea seemed terrible to him, for they spoke to him of the lost boys, and told a tale of horror.
XVIII.
The venerable but very unfortunate, Corbet—The Antelope lies to.—Emotions of her despairing Commander.—Night and Morning.—The Fishing Schooner,—An old Acquaintance appears, and puts the old, old Question.—Corbet overwhelmed.—He confesses all.—Tremendous Effect on Captain Tobias Ferguson.—His Selfcommand.—Considering the Situation.—Wind and Tide.—Theories as to the Position of the lost Ones.—Up Sail and after.—The last Charge to Captain Corbet.
THE unfortunate Corbet thus found himself in a state of despair. The situation, indeed; could not possibly be worse. The ship was gone; and where? Who could tell? Certainly not he. He had exhausted all his resources. From the cabin table he was unable to elicit any further information, nor could his aged brain furnish forth intellectual power which was at all adequate to the problem before it. He was alone. He had none to help him. With Wade he did not offer to take counsel, feeling, perhaps, that Wade would be about as useful in this emergency as the Antelope’s pump.
Meanwhile the storm increased, and Captain Corbet felt himself unable to contend with it. The tattered old sails of the Antelope were double-reefed, but seemed every moment about to fly into ribbons. There was no object in keeping his present course any longer; and so he decided, in view of the storm and his own indecision, to lie to. And now the Antelope tossed, and pitched, and kicked, and bounded beneath Captain Corbet,
"like a steed
That knows its rider,”
and Wade went below, and took refuge in sleep; and the good, the brave, yet the unhappy Corbet took up his position upon the windlass, and bestriding it, he sat for hours peering into space. There were no thoughts whatever in his mind. He tried not to speculate, he attempted not to solve the problem; but there was, deep down in his soul, a dark, drear sense of desolation, a woful feeling of remorse and of despair. Nothing attracted his attention on that wide sea or troubled sky; not the waste of foaming waters, not the giant masses of storm clouds, nor yet that fishing schooner, which, only a few miles off was also, like the Antelope, lying to. Captain Corbet did not notice this stranger; he did not speculate upon the cause of her presence; he did not see that she was the identical vessel that he had noticed before, and therefore did not wonder why it was that he had been followed so long and so persistently.
So he sat on the windlass, and gazed forth into illimitable space.