'When we surrendered her,' were almost his first words after holding me by the hand and struggling as though with his tears, 'I had a feeling we should never again meet. I ought not to have permitted her to take so long a voyage. She was too delicate, her health was too poor, she was too used to have comforts'—he could not proceed for some moments. He then said, 'She was my only child. I am now alone in the world,' and, casting himself into a chair, he hid his face and gave way.
'I will not believe there is no hope,' I exclaimed, and, sitting down beside him, I repeated all that I had gathered from my talk with the boatswain Wall, with whom I had conversed for above a couple of hours on the previous day, having brought him to the bank by a letter and taken him into a private room, where, with my father, I had closely questioned him, getting all that his experiences as an old seaman could reveal of the chances a shipwrecked company had in those seas where Marie had been abandoned.
Sir Mortimer listened to me with passionate interest, dwelling upon every syllable, catching me up if he did not clearly understand. Sometimes his eyes brightened, as with a little struggle of hope, but often he shook his head.
'Consider,' he exclaimed, 'the "Lady Emma" was dismasted July 2.' (I had all necessary notes of dates and the like in my note-book.) 'The crew left her on the fourth. This is October 5; you cannot believe that the helpless hull has continued to float in such frightful seas as run off Cape Horn all this while.'
'I don't say so. I don't dream it. God forbid, indeed; for that would put an end to all chance of our ever seeing Marie again. But may we not believe that she was fallen in with long ago?'
'Why have we not heard? There has been time!'
'No. Suppose the vessel that rescued them was proceeding to Australia. We might need another three months to hear.'
'Oh, but think!' he exclaimed, 'a dismasted hull, utterly helpless; the horrors and perils of ice close to, a wild sea continually running—she has not the strength to meet such sufferings; they will have broken her poor heart. Oh! Archie, she has been taken! She is dead! We shall never see her again.'
He had made up his mind to this, and I daresay his comparative calmness rose from his resolution to accept the worst at once. Though he knew little or nothing about the sea, he could not listen to my version of Wall's story without regarding the wreck of the 'Lady Emma' as hopelessly complete as any in the maritime records. He said that the mere circumstance of the 'Planter' cruising and finding nothing was of itself a death-blow to hope.
'And what is there to hope for?' he exclaimed, rising and moving about the room with something of feebleness. 'We are to wait; but for what? This sort of waiting in grief breaks down the intellect—the mourner goes mad. In my youth I knew a woman whose only son had been drowned in a shipwreck. She would not believe it; she hoped on; and ten years after his death saw her on the beach with her eyes fixed upon the sea, gazing, with a joyous welcoming face, at the apparition of her child whom, in her craziness, she beheld approaching her in a boat. Oh no!' he cried with a sudden, most moving, passionate wringing of his hands, 'Marie has perished; she is lost to us! Why did not the good God hinder me from sending her away? They told me that nothing could save her life but a voyage, and I, who would have given my life for her, despatched her to her death!'