It was then that the German, the owner of the canoes, who had fought his
way with great efforts across the violence of the waters, and indeed up
against the stream for some few yards, made his effort to save the life
of that poor frail creature. He had watched the spot at which she had
gone down, and even while struggling across the river, had seen how the
Indian had followed her and had failed. It was now his turn. His life
was in his hand, and he was prepared to throw it away in that attempt.
Having succeeded in placing himself a little above the large tree, he
turned his face towards the bottom of the river, and dived down among
the branches. And he also, after that, was never again seen with the
life-blood flowing round his heart.
When the sun set that night, the two swollen corpses were lying in the
Commandant’s hut, and Abel Ring and Arkwright were sitting beside them.
Arkwright had his baby sleeping in his arms, but he sat there for
hours,--into the middle of the long night,--without speaking a word to
any one.
“Harry,” said his brother at last, “come away and lay down. It will be
good for you to sleep.”
“Nothing ever will be good again for me,” said he.
“You must bear up against your sorrow as other men do,” said Ring.
“Why am I not sleeping with her as the poor German sleeps? Why did I let
another man take my place in dying for her?” And then he walked away
that the other might not see the tears on his face.
It was a sad night,--that at the Commandant’s hut, and a sad morning
followed upon it. It must be remembered that they had there none of
those appurtenances which are so necessary to make woe decent and
misfortune comfortable. They sat through the night in the small hut, and
in the morning they came forth with their clothes still wet and dirty,
with their haggard faces, and weary stiff limbs, encumbered with the
horrid task of burying that loved body among the forest trees. And then,
to keep life in them till it was done, the brandy flask passed from hand
to hand; and after that, with slow but resolute efforts, they reformed
the litter on which the living woman had been carried thither, and took
her body back to the wild plantation at Padregal. There they dug for her
her grave, and repeating over her some portion of the service for the
dead, left her to sleep the sleep of death. But before they left her,
they erected a pallisade of timber round the grave, so that the beasts
of the forest should not tear the body from its resting-place.
When that was done Arkwright and his brother made their slow journey
back to San José. The widowed husband could not face his darling’s
mother with such a tale upon his tongue as that.
A RIDE ACROSS PALESTINE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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