When Mrs Roxburgh remembered to ask, ‘Did you perhaps notice a likeness to any of us? Children take after grandparents more often than a father or mother,’ Mr Roxburgh laughed a high laugh, and uncharacteristically squeezed her.
‘I shouldn’t say … No! It was too soon, Ellen — and too brief a glimpse.’ After that, he briefly sighed, for the pity of it, as it could not have been out of contentment. ‘Since you’ve asked, however, I believe I did detect in him a touch of what might have developed into a likeness to myself.’
Then he kissed her on the mouth in full view of those who were watching, more in their dreams than through their eyes.
‘I am so glad,’ she replied, ‘and that it was a boy, as you would have wanted.’ The twitch of a smile, and she settled back into acceptance of wherever the future might float them.
Once in the days, weeks, years which followed, she did rouse herself sufficiently to ask, ‘You are not going to leave me, are you?
‘How could I?’ he answered. ‘Even if I wanted to.’
Such an indisputable reason and barely modified rebuke might have hurt if strength were not returning to her sodden limbs, not through divine forbearance, as some might have seen it, but because, she realized, she was born a Gluyas. The rain had stopped; life is to be lived. She would have got to her feet like any other beast of nature, steadying herself in the mud and trampled grass, had it been a field and not a waterlogged boat.
In present circumstances, on a morning when the weather noticeably favoured them, she threw out the last of the thoughts which had been flickering all this time in her skull like phosphorescent fish. Her hands, she saw, were the same inherited extremities of rude but practical shape. If they had lost their native tan, it was not through a course in ladycraft, but by the action of sea-water. So she was still equipped for bailing, an occupation some of the strongest members of the crew by now tended to renounce.
Her work removed her, if not physically, from her husband Mr Austin Roxburgh, who remained huddled at her side. Although occasionally he gave a hand, it was but an apathetic gesture; he was not of course so hardened by monotony as she. Once on looking at him she surprised an expression, not quite despair and not quite disgust, but which might have been caused by the slow poison of apprehension. At all events she was wounded by it, and set about bridging the distance between them.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘An attack is not coming on you again? Or are you grieving?’ She put out her coarsened hand as though to shore him up with her recovered strength.
He appeared at first resentful of her kindness, like some pampered child preparing to take revenge for neglect.
‘You know that my thoughts are always only for you, Mr Roxburgh,’ she added without consideration for the truthfulness of what she was saying.
Thus his servant hoped to reassure him.
But he sank his chin against her shoulder. ‘It is Spurgeon, Ellen. I think he must have died.’
For the moment only the Roxburghs were aware of what had happened; nor had the company noticed the tears shed by Mr Roxburgh for his recently acquired, unsavoury friend. Weakened morally as well as physically, he would not have attempted to conceal those tears, unless from his wife, and Ellen, he trusted, would mistake his grief for a natural process of crystallized moisture dissolving back into its original state of water.
Spurgeon the steward, already stiff, was pitched overboard by his crew-mates without benefit of canvas or lead. In this instance Captain Purdew did not read the burial service, perhaps because he did not realize anything had happened, or else he had mislaid Oswald Dignam’s book. Spurgeon, some of those present suspected, is the corpse the sharks get. But who cares, finally?
That Mr Roxburgh cared, nobody but his wife guessed, and she must steel herself that her husband might survive.
As one who had hungered all his life after friendships which eluded him, Austin Roxburgh did luxuriate on losing a solitary allegiance. It stimulated his actual hunger until now dormant, and he fell to thinking how the steward, had he not been such an unappetizing morsel, might have contributed appreciably to an exhausted larder. At once Mr Roxburgh’s self-disgust knew no bounds. He was glad that night had fallen and that everyone around him was sleeping. Yet his thoughts were only cut to a traditional pattern, as Captain Purdew must have recognized, who now came stepping between the heads of the sleepers, to bend and whisper, This is the body of Spurgeon which I have reserved for thee, take eat, and give thanks for a boil which was spiritual matter … Austin Roxburgh was not only ravenous for the living flesh, but found himself anxiously licking the corners of his mouth to prevent any overflow of precious blood.
Upon suddenly waking, Mr Roxburgh discovered his mouth wide open. He would have set about ejecting anything inside it, from his stomach too, had they not been equally empty. Emptiness, however, did not protect him from a fit of sweating shivers, which persisted after he had looked around him and seen that all, including Captain Purdew, were fast asleep.
So much for night and dreams. Glances exchanged by daylight promised worse, until in the course of the morning Mr Courtney stood up in the bows and drew attention to what first appeared a slate-pencil miraculously laid along the edge of the slate. Whether island or mainland, he personally was not prepared to speculate, but wind, sea, and general conditions being in the long-boat’s favour, he ventured to affirm that they would make landfall before many hours.
The Roxburghs avoided looking at each other. Instead she clasped his hand, the rather delicate, attenuated bones and the boss made by his signet ring.
7
All trace of cloud was gone from the sky as they approached the shore. Faces bleared by rain and suffering offered themselves instead to an onslaught by ceremonial sunlight, which was grinding an already dazzling stretch of sand into an ever-intensifying white. Some of the castaways would not have been surprised had the Almighty ordered His trumpets to sound their arrival on the fringe of paradise itself.
They advanced lumbering through the turquoise-to-nacre of a still sea, which shaded into a ruffle of surf, scarce enough to wet the ankles. The long-boat practically beached herself, in the silence and amazement of those aboard. One or two jumped, but more of them tumbled out, to crawl like maimed crabs through the shallows.
Not unnaturally the passengers were again forgotten. It was Mrs Roxburgh who offered her husband a helping hand to clear the gunwale, as though he had returned to playing the role of dedicated invalid.
‘Is it too much to hope, Ellen,’ he whispered through bleeding lips, ‘that we shall be left in peace awhile, to recover our strength — if not our normal, rational thoughts?’
‘I expect so,’ she murmured to comfort him.
The crew ahead of them were already either lying, elbows in the air, or cheek to the sand, while one soul more suspicious than the rest wandered in a circle, apparently attempting to sight the invisible insect, or malicious spirit, which was bound to start tormenting him.
Whether from extreme debility or devotion to duty, Captain Purdew was the last to leave the boat. Staggering ashore he fell on his knees where the sand still glistened with bubbles left by the retiring wave, and proceeded to give thanks to their Maker in what passed for an official voice, ‘Almighty Lord, I pray that we may prove ourselves worthy of this unexpected blessing … that we may be strengthened for the trials to come from having experienced your loving mercy …’ but went into a more private mumble, ‘and fill our empty bellies, Lord … and slake our unbearable thirst … not with pebbles, nor lead sinkers. My dear, it wasn’t me who would have abandoned Bristol Maid, if others hadn’t been in favour …’