Fainter and fainter grew the accents of the fierce, fanatical preacher; his excitement forsook him as the danger became more and more imminent.

The crowd broke into groups.  Pale, stern men, with rigid features, who had been employed aiding in the construction of the rafts, returned now to the sides of their wives and children.

Through a vista on the deck I discerned Miss Lamarque, sitting quietly with her youngest nursling in her arms, beside her brother.  His children and slaves were gathered around her knees.  Dunmore was giving her my message, I could not doubt, from the glances she cast in my direction, as he stood near by.  I knew that he would soon turn to come again, but my resolution was fixed.

Captain Ambrose, with a face grown old in half a day, gray, abstracted, wretched, passed and repassed me several times, telescope in hand.

Ralph Maxwell on the round-house kept constant watch, his attitude dauntless, his face uplifted and keen, field-glass in hand.  His West-Point training stood him in good stead now.  Captain Falconer, a naval officer, had returned to the side of Miss Oscanyan, the woman he had loved hopelessly for years, and, before the scene closed between us forever, I saw him clasp her to his bosom; so that trying hour had for some high spirits its crowning consolations, its solace and reward, and, whatever else was in store, the martyrdom of love was over.

An eager hand caught my shawl.  “He is coming back, coming to persuade you to leave us,” said the young girl; “but you have promised not to part from us, and I feel that God will remember us if we remain together firm and fast, we three.”

Then the pale widow spoke in turn:  “Let me stay beside you too,” she entreated; “it makes me feel stronger, I am so desolate—­” and she bowed her head and wept.

I would have said in the strange, calm bitterness that possessed my soul:  “What value has life to you and your deformed one?  Poor, widowed, sickly, and despised, why should you wish to live?  Why encumber me?”

But thoughts like these were not for human utterance now, and we sat together, hand locked in hand for a time, waiting for the end, as men may wait in years to come, when the earth is gray with sin, for the coming of the fiery comet that they know is destined to consume them.

For was not this ship our world, penned in as we were on every side, and separated from all else by an ocean inexorable and illimitable as space, and were not we likewise looking forward to a fiery doom—­our finite, perhaps final, day of judgment?

I could understand then, for the first time, how condemned criminals feel—­well, strong, yet dying!  I knew how Walter La Vigne, the self-doomed, had felt, and some passages of Madame Roland’s appeal rose visibly before me, as if written on the air rather than in my memory.  I had read the book at Beauseincourt, and it had powerfully impressed me; and this, I remember, was the passage that swept across my brain: