‘Then we see now what the enemy have seen but once. That was in seventy-nine, when she sighted the French and Spanish fleet off Scilly, and she retreated because she feared a landing. Well, ’tis a brave ship and she carries brave men!’
Anne’s tender bosom heaved, but she said nothing, and again became absorbed in contemplation.
The Victory was fast dropping away. She was on the horizon, and soon appeared hull down. That seemed to be like the beginning of a greater end than her present vanishing. Anne Garland could not stay by the sailor any longer, and went about a stone’s-throw off, where she was hidden by the inequality of the cliff from his view. The vessel was now exactly end on, and stood out in the direction of the Start, her width having contracted to the proportion of a feather. She sat down again, and mechanically took out some biscuits that she had brought, foreseeing that her waiting might be long. But she could not eat one of them; eating seemed to jar with the mental tenseness of the moment; and her undeviating gaze continued to follow the lessened ship with the fidelity of a balanced needle to a magnetic stone, all else in her being motionless.
The courses of the Victory were absorbed into the main, then her topsails went, and then her top-gallants. She was now no more than a dead fly’s wing on a sheet of spider’s web; and even this fragment diminished. Anne could hardly bear to see the end, and yet she resolved not to flinch. The admiral’s flag sank behind the watery line, and in a minute the very truck of the last topmast stole away. The Victory was gone.
Anne’s lip quivered as she murmured, without removing her wet eyes from the vacant and solemn horizon, ‘“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters—”’
‘“These see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep,”’ was returned by a man’s voice from behind her.
Looking round quickly, she saw a soldier standing there; and the grave eyes of John Loveday bent on her.
‘’Tis what I was thinking,’ she said, trying to be composed.
‘You were saying it,’ he answered gently.
‘Was I?—I did not know it. . . . How came you here?’ she presently added.