‘If the morning exposes the ships,’ said I, ‘they’ll see us, and very joyfully attempt to fetch us—that is to sail to us.’
She turned to look through a window the glass of which was gone, and through which the wind was shrilling as though it blew into a cylinder. It was fast darkening. In these latitudes twilight is brief, and in such weather as this there would be none. It was little more now than sombre blank greyness outside, with a sight of the steel-coloured swell, over whose humps the seas were rushing in foam, shouldering and vanishing into the thickness. But there was no increase in the wind, and the run of the surge did not gain in weight.
I watched the girl while she looked through the window. It is not in language to convey the tragic irony that was put into our situation by her sparkling holiday attire. Her dress was of some white material, of a silken or lustrous nature, that most perfectly fitted the beauties of her person. Her hat was some rich combination of richly plumed straw. She had removed her gloves on descending into the cabin of the hull when we boarded her, and many rings of splendour and value flashed on her fingers in a very armour of jewels and gold. There were gems in her ears, and a heavy chain of gold round her neck, terminating in a whole cluster of trinkets at her girdle, in which was sheathed a watch of the size of her thumb-nail. Think of this glittering figure, this stately, most perfect shape of womanhood in the gloom of the strong, rude interior of the deck-house, with its few rough details of fittings in the shape of a table and lockers, nothing to see through the window but the rough deck spreading naked to its splinters of bulwark, with the angry foam of waters beyond, and a near sky of fast blackening vapour!
‘What are we to do?’ she exclaimed, resuming her former attitude and fixing her large desperate eyes upon me.
‘We must wait,’ said I.
‘You have been a sailor, Mr. Dugdale; tell me what you think?’
‘Well, first of all, we must be prepared to spend the night on this wreck’—— She flashed her hands to her face and held them there, and I waited for her to look at me again. ‘This weather,’ I proceeded, ‘is not likely to last very long. The dawn will probably exhibit a clear sky. If the ships are not in sight’—she drew in her breath with an hysterical ‘Oh’—‘they will still have the bearings of the wreck, and search for us. Were there but a single vessel to hunt after the hull, we might still feel perfectly safe; but there are two, and one of them is an English man-of-war.’
‘But will Sir Edward Panton know that we are here?’
‘No doubt. He or others will have seen the cutter deviate for the wreck instead of pulling for the Indiaman.’
‘But they may think we are in the boat; and if she is not recovered, they will search for her, and not trouble themselves about the wreck.’