He lifted one hand feebly to his chest, with a dull hope of crushing out the faint life beating uselessly there; then, with a desperate clutch on the sand, struggled towards the water.
"I go to swim! Sharley! Sharley!" he cried, and that was all.
The morning dawned, bleak and blue; the thin light came into the cracks of a wrecker's hut, colder than even on the sea. Jacobus had made a heap of ropes and driftwood on which to lay his dead. He sat holding her head on his breast, having twisted up her wet hair in a vain effort to adjust it as she liked it best. There was no wild vagueness in his eyes, such as dimmed them sometimes over his books; it was a grave, simple, reasonable face that bent over this cold and unanswering one. It seemed as if this one great blow, which God had given, had struck out from his life all its vain vagaries and dreams.
Lufflin and one or two fishermen stood by, looking on; and outside he heard women's voices, in shrill whispers, and a sob now and then.
"I want to carry her in the shore farther," he said, looking up impatiently. "I will not have her vexed by these sounds of trouble."
"Yes, yes," said Lufflin, soothingly. "But you forget, dear Sir, she's beyond all reach of pain now. Sorrow and tears cannot come near her again."
"I don't know," said Jacobus,—"she has a quick ear for any cry of trouble,"—holding the thin, blue-veined hand in his, and looking at it with a face which made old Lufflin turn away.
"She be at rest now, yer woman," piped George Cathcart, in true class-meeting twang. "Not all yer cries, nor the cries of the sea, neyther, 'u'd wake her. Glory be to God!"
Jacobus looked from one to the other, his sickly frame in a heat of inarticulate rage. That these boors, that death itself, should come between him and his wife and say she could not hear his lightest word!
"Why, it's Lotty!"—in a whisper, hugging the stiff body closer, looking up to Lufflin. "Dead or alive, it's my wife. It's Lotty. Do not you understand?"