“If it had been Hawkins’s father,” returned the boy, with indomitable energy, “Hawkins would not say he had heard nothing. It was my father, my lord! my father.”
Sobs choked his voice; he became pale and silent, and presently fell down insensible, like his sister.
Glenarvan had him carried to his bed, where he lay in a deep swoon.
“Poor orphans,” said John Mangles. “It is a terrible trial they have to bear!”
“Yes,” said Glenarvan; “excessive grief has produced the same hallucination in both of them, and at the same time.”
“In both of them!” muttered Paganel; “that’s strange, and pure science would say inadmissible.”
He leaned over the side of the vessel, and listened attentively, making a sign to the rest to keep still.
But profound silence reigned around. Paganel shouted his loudest. No response came.
“It is strange,” repeated the geographer, going back to his cabin. “Close sympathy in thought and grief does not suffice to explain this phenomenon.”
Next day, March 4, at 5 A. M., at dawn, the passengers, including Mary and Robert, who would not stay behind, were all assembled on the poop, each one eager to examine the land they had only caught a glimpse of the night before.