The dawn was breaking when the crash came, a thunderous crash of rock and steel as the great vessel struck the reef, shook herself free, and struck again, her stern grinding deep into the rock. In that moment every soul on board looked death in the face, and it seemed, indeed, as though death were inevitable. The heroic efforts of the crew succeeded in launching the boats, but several of the number were swamped before the eyes of the beholders, and for the rest the chance of survival on such a sea seemed small indeed. Even so, there was a fight for a place, for to remain on the ship meant a certainty of death, and the wildest chance is precious in such a plight, but among the men and women who fought and struggled was no member of Geoffrey Sterne’s party.
Flora’s panic of terror had been so violent that it had been necessary to drug her with a strong sleeping draught, and the faithful maid refused to leave her side. Sterne had, indeed, made an attempt to persuade Meriel to try for a place, but she had flamed into bitter anger, and he had not persisted. He saw her seated with the other waiting ones in the stern of the vessel, already tilted high above the bow, and turned in silence to make his way to his wife.
That moment for Meriel was the bitterest of all. The act of death itself had for her no terror; it was the parting from Geoffrey Sterne which wrung her heart. So inextricably had her life become woven with his that she had no wish to live in a world from which he was absent, and if she lived on, separation was bound to come. Only one unutterable regret filled her soul—she was going out into eternity a maimed, stunted thing, from whom had been withheld the meaning of life, the deepest part of whose nature had been persistently starved.
“If for even one minute I could have said, ‘I am happy!’ I could have died content. But I have never known happiness, and now death is coming, and I am waiting for it alone.”
In that last word lay the sting. She was alone; the solitary unit among the crowd who had no one to comfort her, and to comfort in return; to whose hand no one clung as to the one sure support. She was alone!
At that moment she saw him coming, edging his way along the sloping deck, with the sure foot, the calm, deliberate movements, which were so emblematic of his strength. Cautiously, slowly, as he came, there was never a moment of wavering in his course. His mind had registered her position among the crowd of waiting figures; quietly, steadily, he was making his way to her side.
Meriel looked around. Surrounded as she was, she was yet in a solitude as vast as space. To right and left the mummied figures crouched in hypnotised calm, oblivious of everything but themselves and their own peril. She was alone on the great deck,—alone, but for that other figure, climbing step by step to her side.
The early light shone on him as he came, lighting up his figure with an unearthly distinctness. She saw the grey streaks in the dark hair, the furrows which sorrow had carved upon his brow, yet despite them all there was about the whole figure an air of youth, an alertness and confidence of bearing, which she had never before beheld. He bore himself like a freed man, from whose limbs the fetters have fallen.
Another moment and he was beside her, crouched on the deck with his face close to her own. The freed look was in his eyes.
“She is still sleeping,” he said; “she will not wake. It is better so. I can do no more for her. And so—at last!—I can come to you.”