In Search of the Castaways Part 93

It was too much for Mary. Overcome with emotion, she fell fainting into Robert's arms.

"Help!" shouted Robert. "My sister! my father! Help! Help!"

The man at the wheel darted forward to lift up the girl. The sailors on watch ran to a.s.sist, and John Mangles, Lady Helena, and Glenarvan were hastily roused from sleep.

"My sister is dying, and my father is there!" exclaimed Robert, pointing to the waves.

They were wholly at a loss to understand him.

"Yes!" he repeated, "my father is there! I heard my father's voice; Mary heard it too!"

Just at this moment, Mary Grant recovering consciousness, but wandering and excited, called out, "My father! my father is there!"

And the poor girl started up, and leaning over the side of the yacht, wanted to throw herself into the sea.

"My Lord--Lady Helena!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands, "I tell you my father is there! I can declare that I heard his voice come out of the waves like a wail, as if it were a last adieu."

The young girl went off again into convulsions and spasms, which became so violent that she had to be carried to her cabin, where Lady Helena lavished every care on her. Robert kept on repeating, "My father! my father is there! I am sure of it, my Lord!"

The spectators of this painful scene saw that the captain's children were laboring under an hallucination. But how were they to be undeceived?

Glenarvan made an attempt, however. He took Robert's hand, and said, "You say you heard your father's voice, my dear boy?"

"Yes, my Lord; there, in the middle of the waves. He cried out, 'Come!

come!'"

"And did you recognize his voice?"

"Yes, I recognized it immediately. Yes, yes; I can swear to it! My sister heard it, and recognized it as well. How could we both be deceived? My Lord, do let us go to my father's help. A boat! a boat!"

Glenarvan saw it was impossible to undeceive the poor boy, but he tried once more by saying to the man at the wheel:

"Hawkins, you were at the wheel, were you not, when Miss Mary was so strangely attacked?"

"Yes, your Honor," replied Hawkins.

"And you heard nothing, and saw nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Now Robert, see?"

"If it had been Hawkins's father," returned the boy, with indomitable energy, "Hawkins would not say he had heard nothing. It was my father, my lord! my father."

Sobs choked his voice; he became pale and silent, and presently fell down insensible, like his sister.

Glenarvan had him carried to his bed, where he lay in a deep swoon.

"Poor orphans," said John Mangles. "It is a terrible trial they have to bear!"

"Yes," said Glenarvan; "excessive grief has produced the same hallucination in both of them, and at the same time."

"In both of them!" muttered Paganel; "that's strange, and pure science would say inadmissible."

He leaned over the side of the vessel, and listened attentively, making a sign to the rest to keep still.

But profound silence reigned around. Paganel shouted his loudest. No response came.

"It is strange," repeated the geographer, going back to his cabin.

"Close sympathy in thought and grief does not suffice to explain this phenomenon."

Next day, March 4, at 5 A. M., at dawn, the pa.s.sengers, including Mary and Robert, who would not stay behind, were all a.s.sembled on the p.o.o.p, each one eager to examine the land they had only caught a glimpse of the night before.

The yacht was coasting along the island at the distance of about a mile, and its smallest details could be seen by the eye.

Suddenly Robert gave a loud cry, and exclaimed he could see two men running about and gesticulating, and a third was waving a flag.

"The Union Jack," said John Mangles, who had caught up a spy-gla.s.s.

"True enough," said Paganel, turning sharply round toward Robert.

"My Lord," said Robert, trembling with emotion, "if you don't want me to swim to the sh.o.r.e, let a boat be lowered. Oh, my Lord, I implore you to let me be the first to land."

No one dared to speak. What! on this little isle, crossed by the 37th parallel, there were three men, s.h.i.+pwrecked Englishmen! Instantaneously everyone thought of the voice heard by Robert and Mary the preceding night. The children were right, perhaps, in the affirmation. The sound of a voice might have reached them, but this voice--was it their father's? No, alas, most a.s.suredly no. And as they thought of the dreadful disappointment that awaited them, they trembled lest this new trial should crush them completely. But who could stop them from going on sh.o.r.e? Lord Glenarvan had not the heart to do it.

"Lower a boat," he called out.

Another minute and the boat was ready. The two children of Captain Grant, Glenarvan, John Mangles, and Paganel, rushed into it, and six sailors, who rowed so vigorously that they were presently almost close to the sh.o.r.e.

At ten fathoms' distance a piercing cry broke from Mary's lips.

"My father!" she exclaimed.

A man was standing on the beach, between two others. His tall, powerful form, and his physiognomy, with its mingled expression of boldness and gentleness, bore a resemblance both to Mary and Robert. This was indeed the man the children had so often described. Their hearts had not deceived them. This was their father, Captain Grant!

The captain had heard Mary's cry, for he held out his arms, and fell flat on the sand, as if struck by a thunderbolt.

CHAPTER XX CAPTAIN GRANT'S STORY

JOY does not kill, for both father and children recovered before they had reached the yacht. The scene which followed, who can describe?

Language fails. The whole crew wept aloud at the sight of these three clasped together in a close, silent embrace.

The moment Harry Grant came on deck, he knelt down reverently. The pious Scotchman's first act on touching the yacht, which to him was the soil of his native land, was to return thanks to the G.o.d of his deliverance.

Then, turning to Lady Helena and Lord Glenarvan, and his companions, he thanked them in broken words, for his heart was too full to speak.