The man’s face fell as he looked into the bottom of the boat.
‘If you’ll catch hold of this here tiller, lady,’ said he, ‘I’ll have a search. They can’t be fur off, I hope,’ he added in a voice meant to encourage me.
I put my hand on the tiller, but hardly knew what more to do with it than to keep it steady. My distress was exquisite. When I looked over the bottom of the boat and could not see any glitter of my wedding-ring and the other two rings I shivered as though possessed with a passion of grief. Oh, if I had been careless in removing my rings, it shocked me to the heart to think of losing them—of losing my wedding-ring, that symbol of my wedded love and happiness.
‘Do you see any signs of them?’ I cried to Hitchens. ‘I shall not mind the loss of the other rings, but I must have my wedding-ring—I must not lose it—I cannot lose my wedding-ring.’
The poor fellow, with a face of real concern, groped about the bottom of the boat. He lifted up a board, and carefully felt about with his hand in some water that lay in a kind of well. But I was sure that if the rings were not to be seen at once they would not be seen at all, because there were three of them, and one at least must certainly be visible: for though there were many crevices in the boat they were all very shallow, and the gleam of the rings would be instantly perceptible.
‘I am afraid, lady,’ exclaimed the boatman, standing up, ‘that they’ve gone overboard.’
I moaned.
‘I didn’t,’ he continued, ‘take any notice of ’em, and in my sudden whipping up of the sail they must have been chucked ower the side. It’s a bad job true-ly,’ and again he bent his figure to look.
I now realised that I had lost my rings; it had not been a loss to be instantly felt and understood. My wedding-ring was gone; another wedding-ring I might easily buy, but the one that was consecrated to me by memory, the ring with which my husband had made me his wife, was irrecoverably gone, and as I looked upon my bare hand I wept, and then for a third time was I visited with a cold heart-subduing feeling of loneliness.
‘Turn the boat for the land,’ I said to Hitchens. ‘I am miserable and want to get home.’