“Don't let me die! Hold me closer, Frederick! Keep me here.”
She clung to him in terror for a second. Then a spasm shook her from head to foot, and relaxing her hold, she sank back on her pillow.
Nina Van der Beck was dead, and one more life was added to the number of Frederick von Waldberg's victims.
CHAPTER XVI.
LANDING AT SAN FRANCISCO.
On the following evening at sunset, the deck of the steamer presented a most impressive appearance. All the officers and passengers of the ship were assembled around the corpse of poor Nina Van der Beck, over which the captain was reading the burial service. The evening was gloomy and threatening, and the dark-green waves were beginning to be capped with foam. Overhead there was a glaring red sky, of the fierce, angry color of blood which tinged the water around the ship a lurid crimson. Away in the west the sun, like a gigantic ball of fire, was sinking behind a bank of ominous-looking clouds, and from time to time a passing shadow shivered on the troubled waters like a streak of purple. Several huge albatross were unceasingly circling around the vessel with broad expanded wings, and their discordant cries added to the weird fantasy of the scene. The engines had been stopped, and the silence was only broken by the slashing of the waves against the ship's side and the melancholy moaning of the wind through the rigging, which was so strong as to sometimes almost drown the voice of the commander as he proceeded with the service.
On the deck at his feet lay a long, narrow object, sewed up in a canvas cover. An Austrian flag had been thrown partly over it, so as to conceal as much as possible the rigid outline of the corpse which produced so dismal an impression in its shroud of sail-cloth, to which two heavy cannonballs had been attached.
Frederick was leaning against the bulwark, close to the place where an opening had been purposely prepared. His arms were folded on his breast, and his head was bent; but, although he was deadly pale, he showed no trace of emotion, and remained so perfectly still that he might have been carved in marble. Only once during the brief ceremony did his unnatural calm give way. The captain had arrived at those most solemn words of a burial service at sea: