"Where's the lady?" said her brother, "Is she safe?"
"She is in the other boat, Sir."
"Is she alive?—Has she spoken?"
"No, Sir, she has not spoken, I believe."
"Is she dead; O tell me!"
"I fear she is, Sir."
The bodies were immediately removed from the boats to a house in the vicinity, and every effort was employed to restore animation. In little more than ten minutes it was announced that the gentleman began to breathe, but there was no allusion made to the lady. Her brother sat motionless, absorbed in the deepest melancholy, till the actual decease of his sister was announced, when he started up and became almost frantic with grief; and though his companions tried to comfort him, yet he refused to hear the words of consolation.
"O my sister! my sister! Would to God I had died for her!"
They were all overwhelmed in trouble, and knew not what to do. "Who will bear the heavy tidings to our father?" said the brother, who paced the room backwards and forwards. "O! who will bear the heavy tidings to our father?" He paused; a death-like silence pervaded the whole apartment. He again burst forth in the agonies of despair—"I forced her to go against the dictates of her conscience; I am her murderer; I ought to have perished, and not my sister. Who will bear the heavy tidings to our father?"
"I will," said a gentleman, who had been unremitting in his attentions to the sufferers.