Heart of Oak: A Three-Stranded Yarn, vol. 3

by William Clark Russell

I could not bear this, for I, too, was heartbroken. I grasped him by the hands, and then he became silent, after looking in my face.

But still, as I have said, his behaviour throughout this meeting with me, even when the first horror and shock of the news was renewed to us both by this our first meeting, was calmer than I had expected. He stayed in London that night, and next day accompanied me to the City, where he had an interview with Mr. Butcher. We then drove to a street out of the West India Dock Road, where Wall lodged.

The substance of Mr. Butcher's talk was that ships homeward bound from the Australias frequently touched the latitude the hull had been left in; there was, therefore, reason to hope that Captain Burke and the ladies had been rescued by one of the many vessels which every year were navigating those seas. He said he had spoken to several captains of experience on the subject, also two or three underwriters of long standing, and on the whole their opinion was, Burke and his companions would be preserved.

Wall had nothing to add—no further conjectures to offer. He went very fully into the story of the dismasting of the vessel and her abandonment, and answered with intelligence the questions Sir Mortimer put to him about Marie, how she looked, if she had picked up, if he (Wall) considered she was strong enough to outlive the horrors and sufferings of her situation, supposing the hull to be encountered within a reasonable time—say a week—from the date of the men's quitting her.

Sir Mortimer went to his home by the seaside next day. I promised to visit him on the following Saturday, but fretting had done its work—I was too ill to travel. I was ceaselessly haunted by the vision of the hull, white with snow, brilliant with ice, clouded with the foam of beating seas, wearily rolling with my dear one, with my Marie, alone in her. Somehow I could not think of her as associated with the Burkes. She was the one, the solitary, figure in the gloomy interior of that tempest-tossed fabric, as I witnessed the vision awake and in my dreams. I was aware that Mrs. Burke had been a most devoted servant, a faithful and honest nurse and friend to Marie, but I had got it into my head that her husband had lost his reason, which would drain his wife's sympathies from my sweetheart; and then, again, realising the misery of a time spent in such a hulk, under such circumstances, I could not suppose that poor Mrs. Burke would in her distraction take heed of more outside her husband than the doom that every hour brought closer.

So the vision of that wreck was always present to the eye of imagination, waking or sleeping, with one figure only in the maimed and beaten fabric.

On the morning of October 20, I went to the bank, having resumed work there two days before. My father had not arrived. I went into my private room and sat down with a heart of loathing at sight of a pile of letters which it would be my business to read and deal with.

I had hardly broken the first envelope when a clerk entered and said that a Mr. Norman, an old customer of the bank, wished to see me. I supposed he had called on business, and after reading the letter I held, I opened the glass door and bade Mr. Norman step in.

He was a merchant doing business with Natal and Cape Colony. He at once said, without offering to sit:

'I have not called on business, Mr. Moore. I heard of your trouble, and grieve to find it but too visible in your face. This morning I received a batch of South African newspapers, and met with an account, which—I don't know, I'm sure—it may be ill-advised on my part——' He broke off, and his hand went nervously to his side pocket.