“A thousand thanks, sir,” she began; but as she raised her eyes to my face in thus giving utterance to her thanks for having, as the colonel had told her, saved her father’s life, a flood of recollection seemed to come upon her, and she exclaimed:
“Ah, I remember now! My father, yes, he is like the gentleman whom I saw on the deck of the steamer that awful night when the negroes rose up against us—last Friday, was it not? But it seems so long ago to me! You, you naughty papa, would not believe that your little girl had seen anything at all, not even a ship, but that I only fancied it in my foolishness. However, there is the same steamer that I saw (pointing with her finger to the Star of the North), and here is the same, for I am sure he is the same, the very same young officer. Am I not right?” And looking up at her father, she exclaimed, “Your little girl told the truth after all.”
“And you, young lady,” said I, smiling at her recognition of me, strange coincidence as it was, corroborating my own experience of the same eventful night, “yes; you are the same little girl I saw on board the ‘ghost-ship,’ as all the men here called your vessel, not believing, likewise, my story that I had seen her or you either. Yes, I would have known you anywhere. You are the girl whom I saw with the dog!”
The next moment I could have bitten my tongue out, though, for my thoughtlessness in alluding to the poor dog; for at the bare mention of him Elsie’s face, which had a sort of absent, wandering look about it still, at once lighted up, and she glanced round in all directions.
“Ah, I declare I had quite forgotten Ivan in the joy and happiness of seeing you again, my father,” she exclaimed excitedly. “Where is he, the brave fellow? Ivan, Ivan, you dear old dog. Come here; come here, sir, directly!”
She looked round again, with a half smile playing about the corners of her pretty rosebud of a mouth and a joyous light in her eyes, expecting her faithful friend and companion would come bounding up to her side; but she now waited and watched and listened in vain, there being no response to her summons either by bark or bound or wag of poor Ivan’s bushy tail.
Nor would there be any more, for his ringing bark was hushed, his body and tail alike stiff and cold, while his noble heart which only throbbed with affection for those whom he loved when living, had stopped beating for aye.
“My dear child, poor Ivan is dead!” said Colonel Vereker tenderly after a short pause, drawing the young girl up to him so that she might not see the gruesome sight on the deck below. “The brave dog sacrificed his life for mine, and but for his help, little one, I should not now be by your side.”
This account of the poor animal’s heroic end, however, did not comfort little Elsie, who gave a startled glance at her father’s face; where, seeing something there that made her comprehend her loss, she buried her golden head on his breast, sobbing as though her heart would break.
“Poor, poor, dear Ivan; he never left me once, never, my father, since you—you went out of the cabin that last night and told him to watch me!” she exclaimed presently, in halting accents between her convulsive sobs, neither the colonel or myself dry-eyed as we listened to her tale, you may be sure. “But—but all at once, after all the noise and that dreadful firing that seems now to go through my ears, I—I heard your voice quite distinctly on the deck; and so, too, did poor Ivan, for I saw him instantly put up his ears, while he whined and looked beseechingly at us.”