I ran my eyes slowly and piercingly along the sea-line, starting from the part into which the vessel’s mutilated bowsprit pointed, and when my vision was over the starboard quarter, I beheld trembling upon the utmost verge of the livid waters stretching to the shrouded sky a minute fragment of white—a tip as of a seagull’s pinion, but of a certainty a sail! I lingered to make sure. Miss Temple watched me from abaft the deck-house. My glance went to her for an instant, and I saw her bring her hands together and lift them, as though she witnessed in my posture that I descried something. My heart hammered violently in my ears, and my breathing was short and laboured.
‘What do you see?’ Miss Temple cried at last, her rich voice, tremulous with excitement and expectation, floating up like the notes of a flute.
‘A sail!’ I exclaimed, calling with an effort. ‘Patience! I must stay here to make sure of the direction she is taking,’ and I stood for a minute pointing while she strained her sight; but there was nothing for her to see down there.
The breeze had weight enough to determine the matter with some despatch, and I knew that if the sail were heading away from us, it must speedily vanish, so mere a speck was it that showed. Instead, though I will not say that it grew whilst I stood staring, it hung with a fixedness to satisfy me that the vessel was steering a course that must bring us into the sphere of her horizon; and not having the least doubt of this, I dropped over the short futtock shrouds of the wreck and sprang on to the deck.
‘It is a ship, Mr. Dugdale!’ cried Miss Temple with something of an hysteric accent of inquiry in her voice.
‘Assuredly,’ I answered.
‘Will she see us, do you think?’
‘Ay, if she does not shift her helm. But we will compel her to see us.’
The girl suddenly grasped my hand in both hers, bowed her head over it, and I felt a tear. I was so affected that I stood looking, unable to speak. It was a sort of submission in its way. I cannot convey my thoughts of it. She was without her hat; I see her now as she bent over my hand; I feel the ice-cold pressure of her fingers, and recall the tears glittering through the beauty of her downcast lashes as they rose. She slowly lifted her large wet eyes to my face.
‘What an experience this has been!’ she whispered; ‘how shall I be able to persuade people that I underwent it and lived?’