human
Have I been asleep? There's a heaviness in the air and a strange weight about my eyelids. How is she, Hume?
gpt
Quiet now, with the Captain's boy at the door. Was it a month ago the _Swift_ went down?
human
Only yesterday, Frank. My God! what a difference! The sea is not the same, nor the sky, nor the air we breathe, nor the look of anyone.
gpt
What an old tub this is, and do you note how the men hang about? I feel as though I cannot breathe freely. I have been thinking of your sister; it is a sad end to her waiting.
human
Ah! poor Loo, murmured Webster.
gpt
Frank, I dare not go home with this story. I cannot. She will say I should have taken the risk myself.
human
Yet his death was worth living for. Hume moved backward and forward by the chart house, while Webster gloomily looked at his figures.
gpt
Webster, he said earnestly,
human
For Miss Anstrade? It is terrible that she should have fallen ill-- terrible. I could have borne anything almost but that. Without a doctor, without a nurse, left to the bungling of two rough men. It will be worse still when she comes to an understanding of her helplessness.
gpt
You think she will recover? As I watched her this afternoon there came a transparency into her cheeks, and the crease between her brows melted, leaving a face of great calm, scarcely ruffled by a breath.
human
Sorrow kills slowly, Frank. She will overcome this weakness. Do you remember how she stood on the bridge, scorning danger, when we danced down the river and the Captain was alive?
gpt
And now!
human
Did you hear her call on her brother in the night? So, I thought, would a spirit call upon its partner sent into the outer darkness. Each cry has taken a year off my life, and my heart is weak now from the pain of it. Do you think that my sister also will call like that? I have been thinking that if a storm laid the ship on her beam ends, and whipped the masts from her, and called on us to fight for our lives, it would be a relief.
gpt
Let us pluck up spirit and face the storm that is in us. I, too, had a spell of despair last night till I thought of Captain Pardoe and Mr Dixon. Then I was ashamed of myself. I can see Dixon's face now as he smiled before he stepped down to his living tomb. What do you think they would say to us if they saw us making so poor a return for their lives?
human
You are right, my lad, said Webster slowly.
gpt
We must remember our duty to them.
human
And to our Commodore.
gpt
Ay; God bless her!
human
That's right, continued Hume, with assumed cheerfulness.
gpt
Now do you make your reckonings, and we'll stand away for the nearest port.
human
That will be Ascension,