I saw from a distance his long, lank figure
writhing like a sapling in a storm, as it overtopped the crowd; but his
words were lost on my ear, and I sat leaning back against the bulwark
with folded hands, absorbed in my own thoughts, when a young girl,
bursting from the throng, came and threw herself down before me, and
buried her face in my lap, convulsed with sobs. When she looked up, I
recognized the young person who had bathed my face in the morning during
my partial swoon--a fair and lovely-looking girl of about eighteen
years, pallid and ill now with excitement.
"Oh, it is so terrible!" she cried; "I cannot--cannot bear it, and he
says we are all hopelessly lost unless we have repented; that there is
no death-bed salvation; and this is our death-bed, you know, for the
Spanish ship passed us without stopping, and we scarcely hope to see
another. O cruel, cruel fiends! to pretend they did not understand our
signals, and leave us to destruction."
And she clasped her hands in mute and bitter despair--no actress was
ever so impressive.
"We must make up our minds to the worst," I said, as calmly as I could.
"Then, if God sees fit to deliver us, we shall be all the more thankful.
You must not believe what this ignorant and panic-stricken man tells
you. Think of the thief on the cross whom Christ pardoned in dying.
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