CHAPTER VIII.

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

"Ah, Miss Basset; leave us--do leave us, for Heaven's sake--this is no scene for you!" said Heriot, half imperatively, half entreatingly. "Ashton, I can ill spare you, but do lead her away. Tell her all, if you choose, now. There is, I hope, no further fear."

Morley put his arms round Ethel, and lifted her back into her cabin.

Still she did not speak, though her pale lips and inquiring eyes showed how eagerly she sought an explanation of the terrible scene formed by the busy group; but Morley was silent, for he knew not how to begin, and contented himself by repeating, as people usually do, that she must compose herself, be calm, and so forth.

"Compose myself for what?" she asked, suddenly. "What has happened?--who is injured? Not papa--not my papa, surely?"

"Yes, Ethel, your papa," replied Morley, retaining her hands firmly in his own.

She uttered a cry, and was breaking from him, when he restrained her in his arms.

"Pardon me, Ethel--dear Ethel, pardon me," he continued to repeat; "your father has suffered much maltreatment at the hands of those villains on deck; but Dr. Heriot has nearly restored him--a little time, and he shall tell you all about it himself."

"Oh," she sobbed, and, overcome by emotion, dropped her head on Morley's shoulder; "my father--my loved papa!"

And, as she spoke, how convulsively the white bosom heaved.

Impulsive, and wildly energetic, Rose Basset now tried to escape from the cabin; but Morley placed his back against the door, and strove to soothe and to retain her.

At first, it would appear that Ethel had not recognised her father in that stripped man, whose face was swollen, streaked with blood, and livid by recent strangulation; and thus, unobserved, she had overlooked the operations of Heriot for nearly a minute in silent bewilderment and alarm.

She was almost fainting again on learning that this helpless patient was her father, but gathered courage from the energy of Rose, who kept incessantly repeating:

"Let me out, Morley--let me go to papa! I must--I shall get out! Mr. Ashton, will you dare to keep me from papa, who is ill?"

Then Ethel joined with her, and insisted so touchingly and so vehemently, that Morley was compelled to yield, and they rushed to the bedside of Mr. Basset, just as Heriot and Tom Bartelot placed him in a comfortable sitting posture, well bolstered up, and covered with warm blankets, where he sat breathing heavily; but with his eyes closed, and his head reclining on the shoulder of the young doctor, in whose face there shone a bright smile of joy and triumph.

"Papa, papa, speak to me!" cried Ethel, in a piercing voice, as she thrust herself between Captain Phillips and Tom Bartelot, knelt by the side of the bed--which was nearly level with the cabin-floor--and stroked his brow with a delicate and tremulous hand, while caressingly she drew his head upon her own breast; "you are not dying, papa--you cannot be dying! oh, say so--speak to your own Ethel!"

A slight quivering of the eyelids, and, if possible, a heavier respiration, was his sole response.

Again she spoke to him more imploringly, and this time the head was raised for a moment, but only to drop more heavily on her bosom.

"Will he die?--will he die?--speak, Leslie!" exclaimed Rose, while wringing her hands.

"No, not if my skill, with God's blessing, can save him, Rose. He is recovering rapidly."

"But recovering from what?" asked Ethel, shrilly; "what manner of ailment or maltreatment is this?"

"Himself will tell you all about it to-morrow; to-day he must sleep--I say must, my dear Miss Basset," said Heriot, in an impressive whisper.

"Oh, that by dying I could save my papa--my own dear papa!" cried Rose, as she rocked herself to and fro, her eyes streaming with tears the while.

"Don't talk so, Rose," said Heriot, almost angrily; "people can do more good by living than by dying, so, if you are determined to stay here, let us see what a dear little nurse you can make. There is no assistant a medical man appreciates so much as a capital nurse; so look alive, you little fairy--end this bother, and squeeze that sponge."

Heriot's cheerful and confident manner did more to soothe and reassure Ethel and Rose than all the friendly hopes expressed by the others--even by Morley Ashton. Ethel patted him on the cheek and kissed him, and bluff Captain Phillips too; which made old Noah Gawthrop's eyes begin to twinkle, and he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket, and thrust his quid of pigtail into a remote corner of his jaws, in the hope that his turn would come in time.

"There is a crisis in the life of everybody;" Ethel Basset had passed that crisis, but it had been one of woe and terror. She had passed, as it were, through a tempest of emotions and alarms of late--emotions that had separated her from her girlish life, strengthened her mental powers, and developed her faculties. So she sought to brace up her energies for trials that might yet be to come--to be a woman of action, rather than, like poor little Rose, a girl of thoughts and tears.

So now she bent all the energies of life and affection to nursing her father, upon whom, as the evening deepened, a heavy slumber stole; thus, left by his side, alone--Rose had fallen asleep, exhausted--she sat and watched, heedless of her friends, who were occupied elsewhere, and heedless whether the ship was becalmed, or rushing before a gale of wind.

Ethel remembered the death of her mother, and the dull stunning sense of a mighty and unwonted calamity and loss--the yawning of a chasm that never more would close; the hushing of a familiar voice that would never more be heard; the passing away of a beloved face, that would never more be seen; and she remembered the calm aspect of the corpse disposed in its coffin, lined with white satin, laid on her own bed, with white curtains, draped up--the same bed in which all her children had been born, around which they had all hovered for weeks in the close atmosphere of a sick room, hushed into silence and on tiptoe, and about which they had all knelt with bowed heads, as the spirit that had lingered for hours between eternity and time fled at last on its mysterious and unknown journey; and Ethel felt that then she could pray.

Now she knelt by her father's side, in that little and confined cabin, where no sound reached her but his deep breathing, and the jarring of the night-lamp that swung from the beam above, and swayed to and fro as the ship rolled, casting weird gleams alike on the pale face of the watcher, and the discoloured features of the sleeper; but she, more stunned and more bewildered than ever, had neither words nor language, nor, at times, coherent thought in her soul, yet that soul was full of a dumb, despairing entreaty of Heaven, but in what form she neither knew nor felt, and scarcely did the chaos of her mind enable her to know what she would ask.

Rose was not with her now, we have said.

Poor child, her grief was noisy, and full of tears, so she had long since cried herself to sleep beside old Nance Folgate.

"Is not all this some phantasmagoria, or am I turning mad?" thought Ethel. "Why am I so far away from Laurel Lodge--far away upon this world of waters, and enduring all these miseries? Ah, my God! if all these should be but the dreams of insanity?"

She feared this all the more that, by some idiosyncrasy of the human mind, amid the horror of her great grief, she was haunted, almost tormented, by a frivolous song and air she used to sing at home.

Why was this, and how was this? The number of brass rings on the curtain rods, the gyrations of the flies, that buzzed about the night-lamp and clustered on the beams overhead, the knots in the wainscot, that seemed, especially when in shadow, to become quaint and freakish faces, all mingled with the memory of this song, which struggled for mastery with the prayers she sought to say, and with the awful idea that her father was dying, and that he and she were alone together in that fatal ship upon the midnight sea.

Anon, the singular and most unwonted silence that reigned around her, the absence of all sounds in the cabin, roused her at last to external objects.

She looked out of the little state-room in which her father lay; the cabin was empty; Morley, Bartelot, Captain Phillips, and all were gone!

She looked at her watch; the time was a quarter to twelve. Midnight was at hand.

New and vague terrors seized her; she ran to her own cabin, and found Rose still asleep beside their old nurse.

"Morley!" cried Ethel, in great alarm; "Morley! where are you?"

But the cabin was dark; she received no answer, and heard no sound but the regulated clatter of the rudder in its case, and the wind whistling drearily through the mizzentop.

Ere this a great change had taken place on board the _Hermione_; but the relation of what had occurred deserves a chapter to itself.