Again the figure flourished an affirmative.
'Then here's Mr. Moore come to take her home,' thundered the mate.
When he said that, Marie—for it was she—leaned forward: she was motionless whilst you might have counted twenty; she then stretched out her arms. I pulled off my hat and flourished it, that she might know me among the crowd we made in that boat, then lifted up my hands to her. But even had my voice possessed Bland's carrying power I could not have called. There, high above, upon the rail of the wreck, flanked by towering walls of ice, stood, with arms outstretched in appeal to me, the figure of my beloved. I had thought to find her dead—she was there; I had thought to find her lying in an African grave—and there, on that high-poised wreck she stood in silent appeal. For weeks and weeks I had been mourning for her, asking of God that I might behold her, seeing her in my dreams, a frozen corpse upon the deck of that hull there: and now she stood up yonder, alive, full in sight.
The boiling of the surf ran a maddening noise of thunder round the bay. But one saw what the man, whoever he might be, had frantically pointed to. The water was smooth from the end of the point to away round for some hundreds of paces. The sea could not get at the frozen beach there: it flashed at the point, and recoiled in clouds.
'Put me ashore,' I exclaimed, 'I can climb those crags. Look how they wind to the ledge: Bodkin will help me. I must go on board that wreck.'
'Sit down, I beg, sir,' exclaimed the mate, catching me by the arm as I toppled half-delirious. 'Tumbling overboard's an easy job. Your eyes deceive you; you could no more climb those rocks than jump ashore from where you sit. What d'ye say, Bodkin?'
The man had already and quickly made up his mind. He glanced at the fall of crags of headlong abruptness in places, huge and nodding, yet so blending in their whiteness with the whiteness they stood out on as to cheat the unpractised eye with an appearance of easy road-way, and answered firmly, 'There's no mortal legs and arms as is a-going to carry a man to the wreck by them rocks.'
'Why did the man motion to that landing-place?' I said.
The mate turned his sheep-eyed face round the bay, and answered, 'He didn't know who we were. He was afraid that boiling,' said he, pointing to the surf, 'would drive us away.'
'How is the wreck to be entered?' I asked, looking up and waving my hat, and then again stretching forth my arms.