“Help!” shouted Robert. “My sister! my father! Help! Help!”
The man at the wheel darted forward to lift up the girl. The sailors on watch ran to assist, and John Mangles, Lady Helena, and Glenarvan were hastily roused from sleep.
“My sister is dying, and my father is there!” exclaimed Robert, pointing to the waves.
They were wholly at a loss to understand him.
“Yes!” he repeated, “my father is there! I heard my father’s voice; Mary heard it too!”
Just at this moment, Mary Grant recovering consciousness, but wandering and excited, called out, “My father! my father is there!”
And the poor girl started up, and leaning over the side of the yacht, wanted to throw herself into the sea.
“My Lord—Lady Helena!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands, “I tell you my father is there! I can declare that I heard his voice come out of the waves like a wail, as if it were a last adieu.”
The young girl went off again into convulsions and spasms, which became so violent that she had to be carried to her cabin, where Lady Helena lavished every care on her. Robert kept on repeating, “My father! my father is there! I am sure of it, my Lord!”
The spectators of this painful scene saw that the captain’s children were laboring under an hallucination. But how were they to be undeceived?