“Marguerite!” he exclaimed.

She tried to speak, but the teeth seemed to hinder the escape of her words, and to break them into bits of sound; a shiver shook her from head to foot.

“I wonder if this is fear,” she succeeded in saying.  “Oh, if there were somewhere to go, something to hide me!  A great horror is upon me!  I am afraid! Seigneur Dieu!  Mourir par le feu!  Perissons alors au plus vite!” And she shuddered, audibly.

Mr. Raleigh passed his arm about her and gathered her closer to himself.  He saw at once, that, sensitive as she was to every impression, this fear was a contagious one, a mere gregarian affinity, and that she needed the preponderating warmth and strength of a protecting presence, the influence of a fuller vitality.  He did not speak, but his touch must in some measure have counteracted the dread that oppressed her.  She ceased trembling, but did not move.

The westering moon went to bury herself in banks of cloud; the wind increasing piped and whistled in strident threatening through the rigging; the ship vibrated to the concussive voice of the minute-gun.  No murmurs but those of wind and water were heard among the throng; they drove forward in awful, pallid silence.  Suddenly the shriek of one voice, but from fourscore throats, rent the agonized quiet.  A red light was running along the deck, a tongue of flame lapping round the forecastle, a spire shooting aloft.  Marguerite hid her face in Mr. Raleigh’s arm; a great sob seemed to go up from all the people.  The captain’s voice thundered through the tumult, and instantly the mates sprang forward and the jib went crashing overboard.  Mr. Raleigh tore his eyes away from the fascination of this terror, and fixed them by chance on two black specks that danced on the watery horizon.  He gazed with intense vision a moment.  “The tugs!” he cried.  The words thrilled with hope in every dying heart; they no longer saw themselves the waiting prey of pain and death, of flames and sea.  Some few leaped into the boat at the stern, lowered and cut it away; others dropped spontaneously into file, and passed the dripping buckets of sea-water, to keep, if possible, the flames in check.  Mr. Raleigh and Marguerite crossed over to Ursule.

The sight of her nurse, passive in despair, restored to the girl a portion of her previous spirit.  She knelt beside her, talking low and rapidly, now and then laughing, and all the time communicating nerve with her light, firm finger-touches.  Except their quick and unintelligible murmurs, and the plash and hiss of water, nothing else broke the torturing hush of expectation.  There was a half-hour of breathless watch ere the steam-tugs were alongside.  Already the place was full of fervid torment, and they had climbed upon every point to leave below the stings of the blistering deck.  None waited on the order of their going, but thronged and sprang precipitately.  Ursule was at once deposited in safety.  The captain moved to conduct Marguerite across, but she drew back and clung to Mr. Raleigh.