The ship flew along—away—the boat struggled after.
They could see the captain take his speaking-trumpet. And oh! and alas! they heard his words.
He swore a dreadful oath; he called Mary a disgraceful name! and he said he would not stop his ship for any one, nor could he part with a single hand, whoever swung for it.
The words came in unpitying clearness with their trumpet-sound. Mary sat down looking like one who prays in the death agony. For her eyes were turned up to that heaven, where mercy dwelleth, while her blue lips quivered, though no sound came. Then she bowed her head, and hid it in her hands.
“Hark! yon sailor hails us.”
She looked up, and her heart stopped its beating to listen.
William Wilson stood as near the stern of the vessel as he could get; and unable to obtain the trumpet from the angry captain, made a tube of his own hands.
“So help me God, Mary Barton, I’ll come back in the pilot-boat time enough to save the life of the innocent.”
“What does he say?” asked Mary wildly, as the voice died away in the increasing distance, while the boatmen cheered, in their kindled sympathy with their passenger.
“What does he say?” repeated she. “Tell me. I could not hear.”
She had heard with her ears, but her brain refused to recognise the sense.
They repeated his speech, all three speaking at once, with many comments; while Mary looked at them and then at the vessel far away.
“I don’t rightly know about it,” said she sorrowfully. “What is the pilot-boat?”
They told her, and she gathered the meaning out of the sailors’ slang which enveloped it. There was a hope still, although so slight and faint.
“How far does the pilot go with the ship?”
To different distances, they said. Some pilots would go as far as Holyhead for the chance of the homeward- bound vessels; others only took the ships over the Banks. Some captains were more cautious than others, and the pilots had different ways. The wind was against the homeward-bound vessels, so perhaps the pilot aboard the John Cropper would not care to go far out.
“How soon would he come back?”
There were three boatmen, and three opinions, varying from twelve hours to two days. Nay, the man who gave his vote for the longest time, on having his judgment disputed, grew stubborn, and doubled the time, and thought it might be the end of the week before the pilot-boat came home.
They began disputing and urging reasons; and Mary tried to understand them; but independently of their nautical language, a veil seemed drawn over her mind, and she had no clear perception of anything that passed. Her very words seemed not her own, and beyond her power of control, for she found herself speaking quite differently to what she meant.
One by one her hopes had fallen away, and left her desolate; and though a chance yet remained, she could no longer hope. She felt certain it, too, would fade and vanish. She sank into a kind of stupor. All outward objects harmonised with her despair—the gloomy leaden sky—the deep dark waters below, of a still heavier shade of colour—the cold, flat yellow shore in the distance, which no ray lightened up—the nipping, cutting wind.
She shivered with her depression of mind and body.
The sails were taken down, of course, on the return to Liverpool, and the progress they made, rowing and tacking, was very slow. The men talked together, disputing about the pilots at first, and then about matters of local importance, in which Mary would have taken no interest at any time, and she gradually became drowsy; irrepressibly so, indeed, for in spite of her jerking efforts to keep awake, she sank away to the bottom of the boat, and there lay crouched on a rough heap of sails, rope, and tackles of various kinds.
The measured beat of the waters against the sides of the boat, and the musical boom of the more distant waves, were more lulling than silence, and she slept sound.
Once she opened her eyes heavily, and dimly saw the old grey, rough boatman (who had stood out the most obstinately for the full fare) covering her with his thick pea-jacket. He had taken it off on purpose, and was doing it tenderly in his way, but before she could rouse herself up to thank him she had dropped off to sleep again.
At last, in the dusk of evening, they arrived at the landing-place from which they had started some hours before. The men spoke to Mary, but though she mechanically replied, she did not stir; so, at length, they were obliged to shake her. She stood up, shivering and puzzled as to her whereabouts.
“Now tell me where you are bound to, missus,” said the grey old man, “and maybe I can put you in the way.”
She slowly comprehended what he said, and went through the process of recollection; but very dimly, and with much labour. She put her hand into her pocket and pulled out her purse, and shook its contents into the man’s hand; and then began meekly to unpin her shawl, although they had turned away without asking for it.
“No! no!” said the old man, who lingered on the step before springing into the boat, and to whom she mutely offered the shawl. “Keep it! we donnot want it. It were only for to try you,—some folks say they’ve no more blunt, when all the while they’ve getten a mint.”
“Thank you,” said she, in a dull, low tone.
“Where are you bound to? I axed that question afore,” said the gruff old fellow.
“I don’t know. I’m a stranger,” replied she quietly, with a strange absence of anxiety under the circumstances.
“But you mun find out then,” said he sharply: “pier-head’s no place for a young woman to be standing on, gapeseying.”
