It was then that he found Maryska.
One of the Albanians carried a lantern, and the rays of it discovered her, kneeling against the broken railings of the church porch, but with face averted from the dead. She did not appear to have been weeping. Her eyes were big and round; her head bare, her hair dishevelled. What she had suffered at the soldiers' hands might not be imagined; but its memories had been obliterated by this sudden realization of the greater loss. All that humanity had been to her lay still and ghastly in that fearsome gutter. Father, brother, friend—he who had gone hand in hand with her through the wild wilderness of the world, he would lead her no more. The night had dropped a black curtain between her and the eternal hope of youth. Womanhood had revealed itself, its secrets thrust upon her by the bloody hands of monsters; but the drugged soul of the child could find no place in her mind for that. He was dead. Why, then, did she live?
She shrank from the light, but did not cover her eyes. Discerning Faber, she leaped toward him as an animal unchained, and bared her breast with frenzied fingers. "Shoot me, stranger—shoot me through the heart!" she cried. He caught her outstretched hand, and she fell almost lifeless into his arms. Oblivion, the greater mercy, saved her reason in the critical hour. She was in a delirium when they made a rude palanquin and carried her down to Antivari. She awoke therefrom upon the afternoon of the second day after in a cabin upon Faber's yacht; and then, for the first time, they believed that she would live.
CHAPTER V
A STRANGE VOYAGE
I
The Wanderer, carrying Sir Jules Achon and his party, lay in Ragusa harbour when the fugitives came down from the hills. The two boats were moored almost side by side in the offing, and hardly had Faber set foot aboard when he sent a message to Gabrielle, begging her help in an emergency. Half an hour later she met him at the head of the gangway ladder, and he led her at once into the gorgeous saloon of the Savannah, as his own boat was named.
"Is this the emergency?" she asked laughingly, as she pointed to the wonderful decoration of the cabin. He told her as bluntly that it was not.