“Alas, dear captain, it is hopeless now!” exclaimed Mr Liston mournfully, with the resignation of despair, drawing away his gaze from the sea, and his head dropping on his breast in despondency.
He was standing almost alone on the deck, the majority of the passengers having gone below—for the wind was cold and boisterous, and the crew having retired forward to the forecastle excepting those on duty aft—a tall, thin, pale man, whom the calamity seemed to have aged ten years in that brief space of time, and bowed with care.
“Only a miracle could have saved them!” he said, as if speaking to himself; and then, turning to the captain, he added, “I suppose you must give them up now, and proceed with your voyage?”
“Yes, it is useless waiting any longer,” said Captain Markham, sinking his voice in sympathy with the other. “Poor fellows, I’m afraid they’ve told the number of their mess long since! But if they are drowned, poor Davy was lost while doing his duty as a gallant sailor; and your son, my dear sir, lies in a hero’s grave beneath the wave, for he sacrificed his life in trying to save that of his friend. It is some slight consolation, Mr Liston, to recollect that; and I don’t think the recording angel above will have forgotten to log it down, either!”
And, as the hardy sailor pointed upwards with a reverent air to where one tiny twinkling star was peeping out from amidst the mass of fleeting shadowy clouds that still obscured the heavens and shrouded the horizon from view, he wiped away a tear from his eye with the back of his hairy hand, bidding the quartermaster a moment or two afterwards, in a strangely gruff tone quite unlike his usual mode of speech, to set the ship’s course once more due east for Australia.
And the Sea Rover went on her way.