"Peter Burtenshaw?"
"Ah! How long was he insensible?"
"Eight hours—rather better! We got him aboard just before eight bells of the second dog-watch, and it was eight bells of the middle watch afore he spoke. Safe and sure! Wasn't I on the morning-watch myself, and beside him four hours of the night before, and turned in at eight bells? He'll tell you the same tale himself. Peter Burtenshaw—he's a stevedore now, at the new docks at Southampton." Much of this was quite unintelligible—ship's time is always a problem—but it was reassuring, and Rosalind felt grateful to the speaker, whether what he said was true or not. In that curious frame of mind that observed the smallest things, she was just aware of the difficulty in the way of a reference to Peter Burtenshaw at the new docks at Southampton. Then she felt a qualm of added sickness at heart as she all but thought, "How that will amuse Sally when I come to tell it to her!"
The old Scotchman had to keep an appointment—connected with birth, not death. "I've geen my pledge to the wench's husband," he said, and went his way. Rosalind saw him stopped as he walked through the groups that were lingering silently for a chance of good news; and guessed that he had none to give, by the
way his questioners fell back disappointed. She was conscious that the world was beginning to reel and swim about her; was half asking herself what could it all mean—the waiting crowds of fisher-folk speaking in undertones among themselves; the pitying eyes fixed on her and withdrawn as they met her own; the fixed pallor and tense speech of the man who held her hand, then left her to return again to an awful task that had, surely, something to do with her Sally, there in that cramped tarred-wood structure close down upon the beach. What did his words mean: "I must go back; it is best for you to keep away"? Oh, yes; now she knew, and it was all true. She saw how right he was, but she read in his eyes the reason why he was so strong to face the terror that she knew was there—in there! It was that he knew so well that death would be open to him if defeat was to be the end of the battle he was fighting. But there should be no panic. Not an inch of ground should be uncontested.
Back again in the little cottage with Gerry, but some one had helped her back. Surely, though, his voice had become his own again as he said: "We are no use, Rosey darling. We are best here. Conrad knows what he's about." And there was a rally of real hope, or a bold bid for it, when his old self spoke in his words: "Why does that solemn old fool of a Scotch doctor want to put such a bad face on the matter? Patience, sweetheart, patience!"
For them there was nothing else. They could hinder, but they could not help, outside there. Nothing for it now but to count the minutes as they passed, to feel the cruelty of that inexorable clock in the stillness; for the minutes passed too quickly. How could it be else, when each one of them might have heralded a hope and did not; when each bequeathed its little legacy of despair? But was there need that each new clock-tick as it came should say, as the last had said: "Another second has gone of the little hour that is left; another inch of the space that parts us from the sentence that knows no respite or reprieve"? Was it not enough that the end must come, without the throb of that monotonous reminder: "Nearer still!—nearer still!"
Neither spoke but a bare word or two, till the eleventh stroke of the clock, at the hour, left it resonant and angry, and St. Sennans tower answered from without. Then Rosalind said, "Shall
I go out and see, now?" and Fenwick replied, "Do, darling, if you wish to. But he would tell us at once, if there were anything." She answered, "Yes, perhaps it's no use," and fell back into silence.
She was conscious that the crowd outside had increased, in spite of a fine rain that had followed the overclouding of the morning. She could hear the voices of other than the fisher-folk—some she recognised as those of beach acquaintance. That was Mrs. Arkwright, the mother of Gwenny. And that was Gwenny herself, crying bitterly. Rosalind knew quite well, though she could hear no words, that Gwenny was being told that she could not go to Miss Nightingale now. She half thought she would like to have Gwenny in, to cry on her and make her perhaps feel less like a granite-block in pain. But, then, was not Sally a baby of three once? She could remember the pleasure the dear old Major had at seeing baby in her bath, and how he squeezed a sponge over her head, and she screwed her eyes up. He had died in good time, and escaped this inheritance of sorrow. How could she have told him of it?