Suddenly Mabel exclaimed with wild transport: “A sail, a sail in the horizon!”
“But a sea-gull floating on the waves,” replied Augustine, shading his eyes with his hand from the glare of a meridian sun.
The earl stretched out his blue corpse-like fingers in the direction indicated by Mabel, and then, raising his hand on high, exclaimed, “It is a sail—help is near—God be praised! God be praised!”
Then followed a time of intense, almost maddening excitement. Augustine stood erect in the car, his tall form raised to its utmost height, as he waved again and again a kerchief as a signal of distress.
“Oh, if they should not see it!” exclaimed Mabel
“Or seeing, disregard it,” murmured the earl.
Again and again a shrill cry for help sounded over the blue expanse. If the freshening breeze bore back that cry, so that it reached not the ears for which it was intended, that same breeze was filling the canvas and bringing near and more near the wished for,—the prayed for relief!
“I think that they see us!” cried Augustine, for the first time during that terrible day a gleam of joy relaxing his features.
“Oh, my beloved father—my own Ida—shall I behold you again!” exclaimed Mabel.
“We must not relax our efforts,” said her uncle, “or we shall perish even in the view of safety.”
She speeds on,—the gallant bark,—dashing onwards “like a thing of life;” the figure of the steersman is now distinctly visible at her prow, his rough hail rings clear over the water,—was ever sight so welcome, was ever sound so sweet! Joy in that never-to-be-forgotten moment proves more overpowering even than terror, and the firmness which had stood the strain of most intense anxiety and fear gives way in the rebound of rapturous thanksgiving and delight!
“But rise, let us on more contend, nor blame Each other, blamed enough elsewhere, but strive In offices of love, how we may lighten Each other’s burden, in our share of woe.”
On the eventful night which had been passed by the earl and his companions above the clouds, the mourners in the vicarage had known but little of repose. If oblivion came, it was in brief troubled snatches of slumber, from which the fevered sleeper awakes with a start to feel an icy oppression on the mind,—slumber which has in it nothing of refreshment.