Alone on a Wide Wide Sea, Vol. 2 (of 3)

by William Clark Russell

Mrs. Lee tried hard to conceal what was in her heart, but it must have vent in some shape or form. It rendered her vigilance impassioned. Indeed, I once took the liberty of telling her that the expression of pain and grief her face unconsciously wore when she sat with Alice, and heard her cough, or beheld any increase of languor in the movement of her eyes or in her speech, proved harmful to her child by poignantly reminding her of her mother’s sorrow and of the reason of it. And so it came about that Mrs. Lee welcomed my intimate association with her daughter and promoted it by leaving us much alone together.

Sometimes Mrs. Webber joined Alice and me when we were on deck, and occasionally she visited us when we were in the Lees’ cabin. I never liked her better than at such times. She subdued her manner, there was an air of cheerful gravity upon her, and her behaviour was as one who has known sorrow. She sank all the coxcombries of her literary talk when she was with us, had not a word to say about her own poetry, and ventured no opinions on the merits of authors. I took to her very warmly after she had visited Alice once or twice in her cabin.

Much sympathy was exhibited by the other passengers, but their good taste and real kindness of heart made the expression of it reserved and askant, as it were. Both the Miss Glanvilles sang very finely, and knowing that Alice loved certain songs which they sang with great sweetness, one or another would come and ask her if she should sing to her, and then sit down and soothe and charm the dear girl for an hour at a time. But neither they nor any of the other passengers ever dreamt of opening the piano until they learnt that Alice was awake or in a humour not to be teased by the noise of the music.

The hot weather tried her terribly. It was indeed as her mother had feared, and I could only pray that Mrs. Lee’s dread of the ship being becalmed upon the equator under the roasting sun for a long term of days would prove unfounded. Sometimes the girl rallied and exhibited a degree of vivacity that filled her mother with hope, and then a change would happen on a sudden. She would be wrenched and shattered by a dreadful cough, her head would sink, her eyes grow leaden, her breathing pitiably laboured; she would turn from the food placed before her, and lay her head upon her mother’s breast or upon my shoulder as I sat beside her, and at such times I would think the end was close at hand.

As I have before said, she did not in the least fear death. She seemed to have but one dread—that she should be buried at sea. I sat beside her one morning in her cabin fanning her. The window lay wide open, but not a breath of air entered the aperture. The ship was becalmed: she had been becalmed since midnight, and now I did not need to inquire what was the meaning of the word. I had been on deck before I visited Alice, and looked around me and beheld a wonderful breathless scene of stagnant ocean. I know not what our latitude was; I dare say we were five or six hundred miles north of the equator. The sea undulated thickly, faintly and sluggishly, as though it were of oil, and it reflected the rays of the sun as oil might, or indeed as a dull mirror would, and gave back the burning light from its surface in an atmosphere of heat that swung to the lip and cheek with the light roll of the ship in folds like escapes of air from a fiery oven.

It was cooler below than on deck, and Alice and I sat in the cabin. She was languid and very pale; there was a deeper dye than usual in the hollow of her eyes, and her fair brow glittered with moisture. We had been talking, and were now silent whilst I fanned her. As the vessel rolled, a delicate noise of sobbing rose from the side. She had not seemed to notice this sobbing noise before, but on a sudden it caught her ear: she listened and looked at me a little wildly, then rose and went to the porthole and stood gazing at the dim blue haze of heat that overhung the horizon, and at the dull blue undulations of oil-like water sulkily rolling to the slope of the sky. She returned to her chair, and putting her cold moist hand upon mine, exclaimed:

‘Oh, Agnes, I hope that God will have mercy upon me and spare me until we reach Australia, that I may be buried on shore.’

‘Have courage, my dear, have faith in God’s goodness,’ said I. ‘Do not talk of dying. Keep up your dear heart, and remember that this is the most trying part of the voyage. In a few days we shall be meeting with cooler weather, and then you will be yourself again.’

She smiled, but without despair in the expression of her smile. It was sad, but it took its colouring of sadness from her thin face, not from her heart. She turned her eyes towards the open window, and said:

‘I am foolish, and perhaps wicked, to dread being cast into the sea. There are many who would rather be buried at sea than on shore. It is a spacious grave, and one thinks of it as lying open to the eye of God. But the thought of the loneliness of an ocean grave weighs down my heart. Oh, I should be happy—happier in my hope of death and in the promises of my dear Saviour—if I knew I was to be buried where my mother could visit me. It is a weakness—I know it is all the same—I am in God’s hands, and I am happy;’ and she hid her face that I might not see the tear which rose to her eyes when she spoke of her mother visiting her grave.