Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/258

 third, strangers again. In the fourth and last, a woman bound with cords lying at the bottom of the boat amidships, a grave, stern man keeping close watch and ward over the prisoner. In the stern-sheets, rough-handed, pitying men, disheveled, compassionate women, gathered round a little group of two. One of these in the uniform of an officer of the ship; the surgeon, perhaps, from the skillful way in which he supported the convulsed and trembling figure of the other on his arm, and held a restorative to the lips and seemed to speak vain words of comfort. And the desolate creature, to whose misery that kindly ministrance brought no relief, lifted his head and looked at Fenella with eyes that were the eyes of her husband.

In her sudden agony of dread it seemed to her that she cried out the names of the two who were missing. "Frank, where is Jacynth. Where is Ronny? What have you done with my boy? Tell me, for God's sake?"

And it seemed that her husband heard. He turned despairing eyes on her. He shook his head and pointed to the sea.

She cried out then, and awoke as the first faint rays of daylight pierced through the blinds of her bedroom in the cottage at Guernsey. And the woman who waited on her, roused by that piercing cry, came running in.