The sea was unusually calm and smooth that morning. A skillful swimmer could make good headway against the tide.
Laurier was an athlete, and swimming lightly and strongly after the vanishing lifeboat, he looked about anxiously for Lyndon, hoping to assist him.
To his surprise and dismay not a sign was to be seen of the fair head of the man in whom he took an almost painful interest for the sake of his daughter.
His straining gaze wandered here and there over the illuminated waters, but the glare of the burning ship pained his eyes, and nothing could be seen but floating débris, swirling black cinders, and the lifeboats vanishing in the gloom of the cold, gray dawn.
His heart sank with pain and sympathy thinking of the life gone down to the depths so suddenly, and the fair daughter left fatherless.
“Alone among those selfish wretches who received her so reluctantly that I feared to trust her to their care! What will become of her, poor girl?” he thought, and obeying a blind impulse he could not resist, swam after the boat that he now observed had slackened its speed as though too heavy freighted, being sunk to the water’s edge.
What he hoped or expected from following he did not know himself. The boat was so full they could not have made any room for him. He was all alone in the wide waste of waters with nothing but a spar between him and eternity, and the chances were all against his rescue. With his superb strength and skill he might keep afloat for hours—or, something might happen to end his life any moment, he could not tell.
He was near enough now to see that there was some commotion in the boat as though of men struggling together in fierce dispute, and the rowers had much ado to keep it from being overset.
In the next moment the struggle was ended by a horrible deed.
Several men lifted and cast out of the boat into the sea the white-robed form of a woman that immediately sank! Shrieks and cries as of horror echoed from the boat upon the morning air! Then the rowers bent to their oars, the boat shot away, and Laurier knew that his efforts to save Jessie Lyndon had all been in vain—the heartless fiends, fearful for their own safety, had overpowered the more merciful minority and cast the unwelcome passenger into the ocean.