A wave of the hand, and an indistinct rumbling in the coarse tones of the mate, were the only answers given to her appeal. A long, deep, and breathing silence followed among the deserted. The grim countenances of the seamen in the pinnace soon became confused and indistinct; and then the boat itself began to lessen on the eye, until it seemed no more than a dark and distant speck, rising and falling with the flow and reflux of the blue waters. During all this time, not even a whispered word was spoken. Each of the party gazed, until sight grew dim, at the receding object; and it was only when his organs refused to convey the tiny image to his brain, that Wilder himself shook off the impression of the sort of trance into which he had fallen. His look became bent on his companions, and he pressed his hand upon his forehead, as though his brain were bewildered by the deep responsibility he had assumed in advising them to remain. But the sickening apprehension quickly passed away, leaving in its place a firmer mind, and a resolution too often tried in scenes of doubtful issue, to be long or easily shaken from its calmness and self-possession.
“They are gone!” he exclaimed, breathing long and heavily, like one whose respiration had been unnaturally suspended.
“They are gone!” echoed the governess, turning an eye, that was contracting with the intensity or her care, on the marble-like and motionless form of her pupil “There is no longer any hope.”
The look that Wilder bestowed, on the same silent out lovely statue, was scarcely less expressive than “he gaze of her who had nurtured the infancy of the Southern Heiress, in innocence and love. His brow grew thoughtful, and his lips became compressed, while all the resources of his fertile imagination and long experience gathered in his mind, in engrossing intense reflection.
“Is there hope?” demanded the governess, who was watching the change of his working countenance, with an attention that never swerved.
The gloom passed away from his swarthy features, and the smile that lighted them was like the radiance of the sun, as it breaks through the blackest vapours of the drifting gust.
“There is!” he said with firmness; “our case is far from desperate.”
“Then, may He who rules the ocean and the land receive the praise!” cried the grateful governess giving vent to her long-suppressed agony in a flood of tears.
Gertrude cast herself upon the neck of Mrs Wyllys, and for a minute their unrestrained emotions were mingled.
“And now, my dearest Madam,” said Gertrude, leaving the arms of her governess, “let us trust to the skill of Mr Wilder; he has foreseen and foretold this danger; equally well may he predict our safety.”