THE GALLEON’S HOLD. I woke from a deep sleep, and opened my eyes against the glare of the risen sun. Death must be like such sleep as that, thought I. I sat up and met Laura’s gaze fixed upon me. She was seated on a seaman’s chest lightly smoothing her hair, and the jewels on her fingers sparkled like dewdrops on the golden fall of her tresses. She looked the better for the night’s rest, her complexion fresher, her eyes freed of the delicate haziness that had yesterday somewhat dimmed their rich violet sparkles; the pale greenish shadow under them, too, was gone. A little past her stood Lady Monson, gazing seawards under the shelter of her hand. Her shape made a very noble figure of a woman against the blue brilliance of atmosphere betwixt the edge of the spread sail and the forecastle rail; the cap she wore I supposed she had found in her sister’s box. Her hair was extraordinarily thick and long and of a lustreless black, and looked a very thunder-cloud upon her back, as I have before said; it put a wild and almost savage spirit into her beauty, which this slender headgear of lace or whatnot somewhat qualified; in fact, she looked a civilised woman with that cap on, but her cheeks were so white as to be painful to see. The full life of her seemed to have entered her eyes; her breast rose and fell slowly, as if her heart beat with labour; yet, slow as every movement in her was, whether in the turn of her head, the droop of her arm, the lifting of her hand, it was in exquisite correspondence with the suggestion of cold dignity and haughty indifference you seemed to find in her form and carriage. I had a short chat with Laura, and found she had rested well. The men were off the galleon. ‘They have gone to the wreck, I suppose,’ said I, scarce able to see that way, however, for the blinding dazzle of sunshine that made the leagues of eastern ocean as insupportable to the gaze as the luminary himself. ‘The poor man Johnson is dead!’ she exclaimed. ‘Ah! I feared it. I believed I could hear death in his voice when he spoke in his sleep last night.’ ‘Cutbill and Head,’ she continued, for she was now well acquainted with the names of the men, ‘have carried his body to bury in the sea past that slope there.’ I sat silent a little. I had all along secretly expected that the man would die, yet the news that he was dead strangely affected me. It might be because he had been amongst the saved, and it seemed hard and cruel that he should perish after having come off with his life out of a conflict that had destroyed robuster men. Then again there was the loneliness of his death, expiring, perhaps, after vainly struggling to make some whispered wants audible to our sleeping ears or to the nodding figure standing at a distance from him on the look-out.