"There's a sand-bar there. We could not get near the shore."
"Ye might try. Ye could send your boat for them.... Yonder! I see a black thing moving.... He'll be dead or married before morning. Oh, captain!... Turn!... For pity's sake!"
The captain turned and looked in the old woman's face, whose eyes, already full, were on the point of brimming over. The alternative she named seemed rather an anticlimax, and not so very harrowing. He would have liked, himself, to be offered such a choice, but fate had never so favoured him.
"He'll do, ma'am. She ain't half bad, the craft he has in tow. She's right and tight. I saw them steering off together."
"He'll be done for, ye scoffin' reprobate! Ye think it fine fun, I daresay; but it's no joke to a man in his poseetion. The girl's well enough, for anything I know. In fack, I thought her not amiss. But marryin's an expurriment ye can try but wance; and I want to make sure before I give my leave.... Do you no see yon black thing movin', captain? It's him! I'm sure of it. Turn!... like a lamb!" and she held out her hands.
The lamb smiled within his beard; but the blandishment was unavailing. "There's nothing moving but the ship, ma'am; and she'll have to move faster, or worse will happen;" and so saying, he escaped to the engine-room to crack on more steam.
Mrs Wilkie was in despair. She clasped her hands and staggered to the taffrail, to gaze her last and fondest on the retreating island. She clung to the flagstaff, with eyes streaming tears, and her short grey curls draggling in the wind. She even waved her parasol in sad adieu; but the wind, ere long, caught hold of that, and spread it out, and twitched it from her grasp, and sent it spinning through the air away to leeward. Anon she waved her handkerchief, when she could spare it from its duty at her eyes, clinging to her flagstaff, swaying and swinging, heaving and falling, with the motion of the vessel, till the pitiless ocean asserted its cruel rights, and she sank a sea-sick Niobe upon the deck.
CHAPTER XIX.
[STORM-STAYED].
His niece's eyesight was not at fault when she thought that she recognised Joseph Naylor's figure silhouetted against the horizon. It was he indeed, and he was not alone. That was the sweetest walk, he told himself, which he had ever taken. It was the happiest day; and he looked back in his tranquil bliss, standing with eyes which rested dreamily upon the sea; and, forgetting to converse, he wondered if the unreasoning transports he had known in youth were to be compared to this.