She still unconsciously held my hand. I put my lips to her fingers, and she released me.
‘It must always be one of the very happiest memories of my life to me,’ said I. ‘I shall never make you believe in the joy your deliverance will fill me with.’
‘Oh yes, yes!’ she cried passionately; then sending a look over the quarter, she added: ‘Are we not losing time? Is there not something we can do to summon her to us? Will it be long before she appears?’
‘No; we are not losing time,’ I answered. ‘I shall have plenty of leisure to make a smoke, and that is what we must presently do. If she be the Indiaman or the corvette, all that is visible of her from yonder foretop is her royals. Her topgallant sails, her topsails, and her courses will have to climb before her hull shows. Her speed to this air will not exceed four knots. She is probably twenty miles distant yet, and we must allow her, unless the breeze freshens, a good three hours to give us a full sight of herself on that horizon out there. So let us first get something to eat, Miss Temple, and then I will go to work.’
But our excitement was too strong to suffer us to make more than a phantom of a meal. A little biscuit soaked in wine formed my companion’s breakfast, but her spirits had returned to her; the remembered brilliancy was in her eyes again; a faint, most delicate flush was on her cheek; with unconscious fingers she caressed her hair as though, influenced by a womanly instinct of which she was insensible, she adjusted her tresses in preparation of our reception by the people of the ship. She was sure it was the Countess Ida. There was real gaiety in the laugh with which she said that she knew Mrs. Radcliffe’s character, that she could well imagine how her aunt had tormented Captain Keeling, how ceaselessly the old lady would importune the captain to make haste and recover her niece.
‘Oh, what a meeting it will be!’ she cried.
‘The sail may prove the corvette, though,’ said I.
‘But she will rescue us, Mr. Dugdale, and hunt after the Indiaman, and Sir Edward will put us on board of her.’
I left her to enter the ’tweendecks, where I collected a number of mats, blankets, staves of casks, and other material, which would burn and produce a thick smoke; and presently, with the assistance of Miss Temple, had a great heap of these things stacked on deck betwixt the foremast and the mainhatch. It was a hard job to get the stuff to kindle, for the mats were damp and the staves not to be set on fire by a sulphur match. But on overhauling the lockers in the deck-house I found a tin can half full of oil and a small parcel of rags; and by means of these I set my bonfire alight. The planks of the deck were thick and wet, and securely calked, and the burning stuff was well clear of the hatch; there was no fear then, as I believed, of the fire penetrating the deck. It made a prodigious smoke. The mass of damp blankets and rags smouldered into a dark thick column, which mounted high ere it arched over to the wind. It was a signal to be sighted as far away as the ship was, and I stood watching it with transported eyes as it soared in belching folds gyrating into and blackening out upon the breeze till it showed like a steamer’s smoke or a ship on fire.
I waited a little, and then got into the fore-shrouds to mark the sail afresh, and beheld the gleam of her canvas when I was still two or three ratlines below the futtock shrouds: good assurance, indeed, of her rising, and nimbly too, and heading square for us. I strained my gaze at her from the height of the top, but she was far too remote to be distinguishable; nothing more, indeed, than a little ivory shaft against the sulky sallow of the sky.