It could not but occur to the priest and to his ward, unaccustomed as they were to encounter dangers, that their position was one which was in itself highly, if not imminently perilous. There they were, thrown in an open vessel on the ocean, and sent on a voyage which was to consist of three days’ or more beating up against the wind and the waves, while their little vessel was every moment subjected to the accidents of a very tedious and difficult navigation.
These thoughts were the more forcibly thrust upon the priest, when after the lapse of a day, and on the approach of night, it was to be perceived that no progress towards the land had been made. The little cutter had tossed about on the high billows, had tacked and re-tacked, still at the close of the day she was not much nearer the end of her voyage than when she was thrown off by the schooner. Under the influence of these thoughts, the priest lost much of his cheerful equanimity. He looked concerned, and his conversation did not flow so freely as it was wont to do. Perhaps this was a happy accident for Agnes; for that young lady, apparently disinclined to speak or to listen, still leaned over the side of the cutter, and, from time to time, cast a side-long look at the schooner that was sailing away in another direction.
The first night of the voyage came, and augmented still more the alarm of the priest. He felt his isolation among the other men whose pursuits and habits were different from his, and now freely allowed his mind to conjure up fears of assassination and robbery. To add to his suspicions, the sailors of the captured ship seemed to herd closely together, and to sympathise but little with their fellow passengers. The master fisherman, true to his promise, paid the greatest attention both to the sailing of his little vessel, and to the safety and comparative comfort of those who had been placed under his especial care.
When the sun, that true and never disordered timekeeper of the tropics, had on the next morning illumined the ocean, the first thought and first action of Agnes, was to cast her eyes around and survey the horizon. Nothing was to be seen; the Black Schooner had disappeared. Scarcely believing her eyes, she looked and looked again; it was as the eyes made it out, and not as the wish would have it; there was no vessel to be seen. Dejected, wretched, sad, and disappointed, she suspended her further survey, and began again to contemplate the blue waters that was rushing pass the jumping cutter. A sad feeling was that of Agnes, the feeling which arises when we lose the last memento of some dear and cherished creature: the memento which, in the absence of the object that it recalls to our memory, receives, perhaps, the same amount of worship as the being itself which it represents. Whatever be the nature of such a token, it is all the same: a golden toy, a lock of hair, a favourite pin, a prayer-book, these are amply sufficient to strike up within us the active feelings of grief-clothed happiness, and to awake anew the recollections of periods whose real and unbroken felicity never permitted us to contemplate or fear a change. To lose one of these imaging toys, is the breaking away of the last link that binds us, in one way at least, to the objects which they symbolize. On such sad occasions the heart is stricken with a prophetic fear, which like the canker-worm ever afterwards eats deeply, and more deeply into our spirits, until there is nothing more to eat away.
Agnes felt this when she could no longer see the Black Schooner. As long as she could gaze on the vessel, there was still a little consolation, or, perhaps her grief was still subdued, but when that vessel disappeared from her view, it reached its height and preyed upon her without mitigation. Who has not stood on the sea-washed strand and watched the careering ship that was bearing away father, lover, or child, and felt his tears restrained as long as a waving handkerchief could convey the ardour of a last “farewell,” but who, a few moments after, experienced the bitter misery that followed, when the ship had disappeared from the view, when an unsympathising horizon had veiled in silence and in obscurity his lost and lonely friends, and his damp spirits were left free to recoil upon themselves? What person is there, who in the hey-day of existence, at the age when the heart is fresh, and the spirits are high, when necessity intervened to drive him away from among friends and relatives, has not felt the pang of separation more and more as every familiar object was, one by one, left behind, and gradually disappeared from his view.
“Agnes, you are sad,” said the priest, who notwithstanding his own anxiety, and disquiet of mind, could not but mark the unsettled and unhappy state of his ward.
“Not very, sir,” the young lady replied, “though our present condition is not the most pleasant.”
“Truly not,” answered the priest, “still we must hope that we shall soon arrive on land. Recollect, that, although we are not now very comfortable, we are still on a voyage towards home, and that thought ought to support us under greater inconveniences than the present.”
“Yes,” replied Agnes, “we are returning home, and that is a comfort.... How beautiful this water is,” she continued, falling naturally into that romantic train which was necessarily called forth by the present state of her sentiments, “how remarkably beautiful are those blue waters, and how pure and transparent is that thin foam which now fringes yon crystal wave!”
“All the works of the Creator are beautiful, my child,” answered the priest.