第15章

"Well, we should all be separated only a few days earlier, that's all!"More frightened at the strange bitterness of his voice than by the sense of physical peril, she was vaguely moving away towards the dimly outlined figures of her companions when she was arrested by a voice forward.There was a slight murmur among the passengers.

"What did he say?" asked Miss Keene, "What are 'Breakers ahead'?"Hurlstone did not reply.

"Where away?" asked a second voice.

The murmur still continuing, Captain Bunker's hoarse voice pierced the gloom,--"Silence fore and aft!"The first voice repeated faintly,--

"On the larboard bow."

There was another silence.Again the voice repeated, as if mechanically,--"Breakers!"

"Where away?"

"On the starboard beam."

"We are in some passage or channel," said Hurlstone quietly.

The young girl glanced round her and saw for the first time that, in one of those inexplicable movements she had not understood, the other passengers had been withdrawn into a limited space of the deck, as if through some authoritative orders, while she and her companion had been evidently overlooked.A couple of sailors, who had suddenly taken their positions by the quarter-boats, strengthened the accidental separation.

"Is there some one taking care of you?" he asked, half hesitatingly;"Mr.Brace--Perkins--or"--

"No," she replied quickly."Why?"

"Well, we are very near the boat in an emergency, and you might allow me to stay here and see you safe in it.""But the other ladies? Mrs.Markham, and"--"They'll take their turn after YOU," he said grimly, picking up a wrap from the railing and throwing it over her shoulders.

"But--I don't understand!" she stammered, more embarrassed by the situation than by any impending peril.

"There is very little danger, I think," he added impatiently.

"There is scarcely any sea; the ship has very little way on; and these breakers are not over rocks.Listen."She tried to listen.At first she heard nothing but the occasional low voice of command near the wheel.Then she became conscious of a gentle, soothing murmur through the fog to the right.She had heard such a murmuring accompaniment to her girlish dreams at Newport on a still summer night.There was nothing to frighten her, but it increased her embarrassment.

"And you?" she said awkwardly, raising her soft eyes.

"Oh, if you are all going off in the boats, by Jove, I think I'll stick to the ship!" he returned, with a frankness that would have been rude but for its utter abstraction.

Miss Keene was silent.The ship moved gently onward.The monotonous cry of the leadsman in the chains was the only sound audible.The soundings were indicating shoaler water, although the murmuring of the surf had been left far astern.The almost imperceptible darkening of the mist on either beam seemed to show that the Excelsior was entering some land-locked passage.The movement of the vessel slackened, the tide was beginning to ebb.

Suddenly a wave of far-off clamor, faint but sonorous, broke across the ship.There was an interval of breathless silence, and then it broke again, and more distinctly.It was the sound of bells!

The thrill of awe which passed through passengers and crew at this spiritual challenge from the vast and intangible void around them had scarcely subsided when the captain turned to Senor Perkins with a look of surly interrogation.The Senor brushed his hat further back on his head, wiped his brow, and became thoughtful.

"It's too far south for Rosario," he said deprecatingly; "and the only other mission I know of is San Carlos, and that's far inland.

But that is the Angelus, and those are mission bells, surely."The captain turned to Mr.Brooks.The voice of invisible command again passed along the deck, and, with a splash in the water and the rattling of chains, the Excelsior swung slowly round on her anchor on the bosom of what seemed a placid bay.