“I got hold of it after a fashion. My hands didn’t seem to belong to me. She watched me across the keel with some anxiety. I misread this, and said, ‘I’ll just rest here a bit, if you don’t mind, and then I’ll swim off and find something else. She said at once, ‘Please don’t. If we keep the gunwale under each side, the air won’t leak out so much. It kept bobbing up before you came. You’re a soldier, aren’t you? I saw you on board.’
“I said, Yes, I was a soldier; wounded, sent south, and just on my way back. Couldn’t say I’d noticed her on board, for I hadn’t. I noticed her now, though. She was quite young; her hair was tied in a sopping tail at the back of her neck, schoolgirl fashion, her face was fair, rather square, perfectly calm, and streaming, I thought at first with sea-water. Then I saw it was with tears. She saw me look at her and said at once, ‘There were children on board, you know. I was playing with them this morning. Jolly lucky for us that it’s not cold, and that we can both swim.’ I said, Yes, jolly lucky. . .”
He stopped. He was silent so long that the woman listening stirred and drew a long breath like a sob. He looked at her quickly. “You and I,” he went on in a low voice, “we’ve talked so much of life and . . . death, and what death means. And there, with that girl, nearer to it than I’d ever been before, I hadn’t a thought or a word different to what you’d have at five o’clock tea! She talked a good deal—rather off-hand and slangy like a boy—of a safety-waistcoat and a certain Miss Matthews. ‘We’d only one,’ she said, ‘and of course, I put it on Miss Matthews, and she sat up all night in it, reading Gold Dust. . . Beastly little books.’ She said, when did I think we’d be picked up? And I said ‘O, any moment,’ though I’d the greatest doubts if we’d be picked up at all. Then wave after wave of pain and sickness came over me. My head was on fire. I thought I must let go. But I hung on; really because I didn’t want to leave the girl alone. . . When I came out of ’em, she—she comforted me. How? O, I don’t know. She just said ‘Stick to it. O do stick to it! You can manage it a bit longer, and a ship is sure to turn up.’ So I kept on managing it a bit longer.
“I’d have done better to let go then.
“Once, though, I must have fainted or something. I came to, and she had swum round, and was supporting me. I don’t know what I said, but she dived back to the other side like a fish. ‘Jolly lucky,’ she told me, ‘that I went in for swimming. I’ve two cups.’ We talked about the cups, I remember; and that Miss Matthews had thought it unladylike to choose cups when you might have had teaspoons instead.
“We must have been two hours in the water. My God! such hours! Not that we suffered much. But that passive waiting was so strange. It called for every ounce of endurance in soul and body; I’ve never felt such a strain on me, even in the trenches. And she—that girl—bore it, and better than I. . .”
He was silent again. Guida listened to the ticking of a little French clock, whose pendulum was a gilded Love swinging on a wreath of roses. Presently it sounded a small ringing chime; and a peal beaten by iron hammers in a hundred towers could not have been more remorseless than the fairy sound.
“From first to last we saw nothing of the other boats, nor of any other survivors. The sea seemed to have been swept clear, even of the tragedy. I did see one smear of smoke on the horizon, but would not draw her attention to it, and it quickly passed.
“I roused from a sort of doze—if it’s possible to doze clinging to an upturned boat, with a broken head. The sky seemed lower and darker. The waves seemed to run against it. It was a funny effect. I expected them to splash and flop back! We were very low in the sea. I thought the boat we clung to was lower. And evening was coming on. Our last hope, I thought, would go with the day. . .
“I looked across the keel. That brave child’s face was very pale. Her mouth was set in such resolution it made her look old. She said quietly. ‘The air’s leaking out of the boat.’