There was one there who, even in that hour of tumult and distress, could not choose but look on her in her marvellous tranquillity; he, like herself, was calm—the only other in all that trembling crew who faced death with indifference. But it was sufficient to look upon his countenance to read the secret of his silent courage; strange it was, indeed, that she—so young, so fair, so like a snow-white lily—should be ready to fall without a sigh into the embrace of the deadly corruption; but it was no marvel that this man should be well content to feel on his strong, passionate heart, the iron grasp which alone would still its beating. A noble face was his, bearing the marked evidence of a powerful mind, a resolute spirit, and a generous heart; but it was so sorrowfully stern, so deeply shadowed with the gloom of some great darkness which lay upon his soul, that it was plain the bitterness of life alone had engendered this recklessness of death.
They had never met before, these two. She was so young, and he already well-nigh past his prime, for he had numbered some forty years; yet now the attraction of a common sentiment drew them towards one another as though they had been kindred spirits. He was gazing intently upon her, when she turned her bright, candid eyes towards him, and smiled. She seemed willing to answer the question his looks were asking, concerning the reason of her fearlessness in this great peril. There was a momentary lull in the storm, and he suddenly walked towards her. It was no time for the courtesies of the world, and he did not hesitate to address her. "How is it that you alone can meet this appalling danger in such perfect calm?" She answered him at once, as frankly as he spoke, with a confiding, childlike smile upon her lips. "Because life, so far as I have known it, has been so happy and so beautiful, that I believe death must be more beautiful and happy still."
"What a marvellous doctrine; where can you have learned such untenable philosophy?"
"I do not know what philosophy means. I have but said what I have been taught by one who was my master. Life, which is a mystery, came to me unasked, and I found it a most joyful thing; if death, a deeper mystery, come alike unsought, why should I doubt it will be a yet more precious gift? But look!" she continued eagerly, "is it not true that the storm is abating?—the sailors are working cheerfully. Surely there is hope. Oh! say that it is so; for, though I do not dread death, because I believe that its gloom conceals some glorious joy, I do fear such passage to it as this—the actual pain, the horror of drowning, the sinking, choked and struggling, into that dark sea. Tell me, shall we live?"
"Yes," he answered slowly, as he looked around the scene, where all gave token that the tempest's wrath was spent. "I think, indeed, that the danger is over; I think that we are saved. You may hear it in the exulting of these trembling wretches who, but a few minutes since, were crawling on the deck in abject supplication. Well, they have what they asked, and soon they will curse the hour when their request was granted."
She looked at him with an innocent surprise in her large, clear eyes. She seemed to think him a being of a different nature from herself. At last she spoke. "And now, since we two alone seemed well content to die, when all others raved and shrieked for life, will you tell me why it was that you were thus willing to be done of earth; for I can see it was not because you believe, as I do, beauty, and goodness, and love in all things, however dark and strange they seem as yet?"
"And did your master teach you," he said, with a bitter smile, "that there is beauty in suffering?"
"Yes! in suffering, in pain, and death; for he said that beneath their stern aspect there lay hidden treasures that were immortal, blessings crowning us with stingless joy; but if you fear suffering, why do you not fear to die: they say there is a pang in dying?"
"You answered my question, and I must answer yours; but it were better for you not to know that such things can be in this world. I did not fear, or rather I courted, the last struggle, because I have found the agony of life sharper than the agony of death can be." He turned away abruptly, as he spoke, and seemed desirous to close the interview; and truly it was a strange conversation which had taken place between those two, in the midst of that fierce, stormy night, with the waters gaping open-mouthed for both their lives. It could not have occurred at all under other circumstances. Two strangers could not thus have told out their secret thoughts, had they not been driven by uncontrollable impulse to a close companionship, because of the communion of feeling which seemed to inspire both in that tremendous hour; but now that it was past, that they must re-enter on the ordinary routine of life, the words they had not scrupled to say to one another appeared to them both as some strange, wild dream. When they met again, it was as though they never had departed from the ordinary customs of society. Yet this brief conversation was destined to have a weighty influence on the lives of both of them.
Their next meeting was in the morning, when all traces of the midnight storm had passed away—when, brighter and more beautiful than ever before, the earth, and the sky, and the daylight seemed to the eyes that had looked on death so near. The passengers were all collected on deck once more, as they had been when the tempest was raging; but now it was that they might weep fears of delight as they felt the glow of the sunshine—that they might revel in the very throbbing of their pulses, which told how the warm life-blood was careering, unchecked, through their hearts.