"Talk not of danger. I"ll be happy every day to think I am braving the dangers my boy has braved before me. Professor Hodson," she says, after a long pause, during which the _savant_ has been musing on many matters, all of which revolve round Meta--"Professor Hodson, I feel younger, happier since you have come."
"Your ladyship, then, must not be gainsaid. Well, I will accept the terms you so generously propose. We will at once fit up the _Alba_.
All things promise well. We have in Captain Jahnsen a thorough gentleman, a sailor, and one who knows Greenland well. He has a daughter, too, who has been to sea. Might she not--"
"Oh yes, yes, if she would but come. She would be a companion to me and I to her."
"Well, well, well. We will consider it all arranged."
The professor rubs his hands, and laughs a joyous laugh; and the lady, rising, smilingly leads the way to the room where they lunch together.
The _Alba_ is at sea. It is a lovely day in the first week of April.
Well off the last of the Shetland Isles is she, and bearing west with a bit of northerly in it. Not steaming, though she has been fitted with engines, and can boast of a funnel elegant and pretty enough for any one to admire.
No, not steaming, for there is a ten-knot beam-wind blowing, and her sails are outfurled to it. White they are, and whiter still they look in the spring sunshine.
The decks are white also, and the very ropes, so neatly coiled thereon, are swirls of snowy-white. Everything about this natty yacht is neat and trim. The capstan is of polished mahogany, the binnacle is fit to be a drawing-room ornament. Whatever ought to be black about her is like polished ebony, and the bra.s.swork shines like burnished gold.
On the deck sit two ladies. One, the elder, leans languidly back in her cane chair; the other--it is Meta--is sitting on a footstool at her knee, reading aloud.
A sailor would say the _Alba_ is a trifle down by the head; only a sailor could notice it. The _Alba_ is heavily fortified with wood and iron around and between the bows. But all water and stores will first be used from the foremost tanks, then she will ride the waves like a sea-bird.
How delightful the breeze! how pleasant the sunshine! and the _Alba_ herself appears to feel the importance of the charge she has on board of her, and is proud in consequence. She nods and curtsies to each pa.s.sing wave, kisses some, turns coyly away from others, and altogether behaves as if she really were the thing of life the sailors on board half imagine she is.
"So gaily goes the ship, When the wind blows free."
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
AN ADVENTUROUS VOYAGE--"THEY"RE COMING! THEY"RE COMING!"
From the very day on which Lady Alwyn stepped on board the _Alba_, and joined the search for her lost son, and for tidings, however meagre, of the good ship _Kittywake_, a new life seemed to spring up within her.
She seemed at once to have lost what she did not hesitate to call her narrow-mindedness.
She began to see that all the world were brothers and sisters, and dependent upon each other, not only for comfort, but for happiness itself. She herself in her pride and exclusiveness had never really known what happiness was before, because she had never been free.
Accustomed to exact and to receive homage from almost every one around her, she had been living in a kind of fool"s paradise, imagining that she was not as other people, that because she had, not riches, but birth and high pedigree, she was made of different material than the "_plebs_," the common herd, could boast of.
Now the scales seemed falling from her eyes. She could see arightly; she could even notice and learn that the world in general was independent of her, but that she was dependent on the world.
Those hardy seamen, who went merrily about at their work, talking, laughing, often singing, appeared not to know nor care that she, Lady Alwyn, was in existence. If Jack at his duty came on the quarter-deck, and she were in the way, politely but firmly Jack would tell her, "I"ll trouble you to shift for a moment, ma"am."
Some of the politest of these offered an arm, and the proud Lady Alwyn was surprised at herself for accepting the kindly offered a.s.sistance.
She was surprised at herself, too, for positively feeling lost, unless she had some one to talk to, and to find herself often conversing with Captain Jahnsen as if he had been a brother, or with Meta as if she were a sister.
The latter, indeed, became indispensable to Lady Alwyn even before the ship had reached the longitude of Cape Farewell.
Before another fortnight had pa.s.sed I think she really loved Meta; for Meta had been so unremittingly kind and attentive to her. She had calmed her fears when the winds or seas were raging and the storm roaring through the rigging, and when the poor little yacht was surrounded with floating icebergs so tall and so terrible in their tallness and quiet but awful strength, that the vessel looked beside them like a tiny fly on a crystal epergne.
Meta used to read to her, play to her, sing to her, and tell her tales; but she never told her _the_ tale--she never told her the tale of her love.
One day the book drooped listlessly in Meta"s lap, and there came such a sad far-away look in her eyes, that--they were alone in the cabin--Lady Alwyn took her gently by the hand.
"What are you thinking about, dear child?" said the lady. "You have something on your mind--some grief, some sadness."
For answer Meta burst into tears.
Had she dared she would have told her ladyship everything now; for Meta could not get over the idea that she was playing a double part, and night and day the thought troubled and vexed her. But dare she tell her? No, she feared her pride too much.
She consoled herself by remembering her vow, that she would never, never marry Claude without his mother"s consent--not unless she joined her hands and blessed them.
But then Claude--might he not even now be lying cold in death? No wonder that Meta wept.
The _Alba_ sailed on and on, or steamed on and on, encountering all the dangers usual to a pa.s.sage out in these seas.
But every danger was bravely faced by the ladies, every trial was cheerfully met, and but served to bind their hearts closer together in the bonds of friendship.
Then one day, towards the latter end of April, the sun went down in a yellow haze, through which he glared red and angrily. There was ice about everywhere, bergs of every conceivable shape and size, some so big that the _Alba_ took long minutes to steam past them, others with pinnacled top so tall that they caught the sun"s rays long after he had dipped down behind the western waves. There was a look of such unwonted anxiety on good Captain Jahnsen"s face that Meta must go and embrace him, and ask him if there was any danger.
"A little, dear," he replied. "You"re a sailor"s daughter, you know, so comfort poor Lady Alwyn if it comes on to blow much, and keep up her heart."
Meta promised she would.
The gla.s.s got suddenly hollow at top, and began to sink at an aggravatingly rapid rate.
The night would not be a very long one, but it would be pitchy dark. A heavy swell, too, was coming in from the south, that showed a storm had been raging far out in the broad Atlantic.
Again and again the captain went to the gla.s.s, tapping it uneasily. It fell, and fell, and fell.
A bit of sail was got ready, only a morsel to steady her, and the fore-hatches were battened down none too soon.
The storm came on, accompanied by blinding snow. Lady Alwyn could not sleep, though Meta sang and played to her.
Music below, sweet, soft, and plaintive; on deck the roaring, whistling, and howling of the wind through the cordage; orders being almost incessantly given to the man at the wheel, and the ship"s course thus altered a few points every minute. This was to avoid the clashing ice.
b.u.mp, b.u.mp, b.u.mp, continually against smaller pieces that could not be avoided.
The ship was proceeding very slowly, and the captain was forward transmitting his orders aft through the trumpet, when suddenly there came a terrible crash, and the shouting and screaming after this was so dreadful that Lady Alwyn was fain to put her fingers in her ears.
The ship had been struck, her planks splintered and staved in right abaft the starboard bow.
It was "two watches to the pumps" now, while the mate and a few hands endeavoured to stem the leak by placing blankets overboard against the hole and over it. In vain; the wind was too high, the waves too merciless. With frozen fingers, the mate and his men had to desist.
Short though the night was, it was a terrible one to the ladies below.
They had quite prepared to meet death. But oh! death like this is death in a dreadful form.
After what seemed an interminable time, the daylight shimmered in through the dead light on the deck of the ladies" cabin, and up and down across the gla.s.s in the scuttle the green seas could be seen washing and lap--lap--lapping.