“Ah!” cried she, pushing aside the hair from their brows, the better to observe their features, “you thought to deceive your mother, did you?”

“Pardon!” exclaimed both the young men.

Here Becker thought it necessary to interfere; and, summoning all the courage he could muster to the task, said—­

“Why should they not go?  Is this the first expedition they have undertaken?”

“No, it is not the first expedition they have undertaken, but it is the first time their eyes and their looks betokened an eternal adieu.  It is the first time that I felt they were forsaking me for ever, and it is the first time you ever addressed them with the words you just now uttered.”

Becker saw that it was useless to attempt to carry deceit any further; he therefore withdrew his eyes from the piercing glance of his wife.  Willis, caught in the act, as it were, was completely thrown off his guard, and had not a word to say for himself.  Fritz and Jack had again fallen on their knees, this time at the feet of their mother.

“Ah!  I begin to understand,” she screamed, as she glanced around on the scared group that surrounded her, like a wounded lioness whose cubs were being carried off; “now the bandage begins to drop from my eyes.  A thousand inexplicable things dart into my mind.  You are sending the boys on an impracticable voyage to secure the safety of their mother; but you did not think that in order to prolong my existence for a few years, you would kill me instantly with grief!  What right have you to impose a remedy upon me that is a thousand times worse than the malady?  Have I ever complained?  May my sufferings not be agreeable to me?  May I not like them?  Is pain and suffering not our lot from the cradle to the tomb?  But I am not ill, I was never better in my life than I am at this moment.”

Here she was seized with a paroxysm of nervous tremors that convulsed her frame most fearfully, and completely belied her words.  Becker rushed forward and held her firmly in his arms.

“God give me strength!” he murmured.  “Go, my children, where your duty calls you; go, my friend, do not prolong this terrible scene an instant longer.”

Not another word was spoken, the pinnace was unmoored; Fritz, Jack, and Willis embarked.  When at some little distance from the shore, there was just light enough for Fritz to notice that his father was directing the feeble steps of his mother in the direction of Falcon’s Nest.  In a few moments more all the objects on shore were one confused mass of unfathomable shadow.  The pinnace dropped anchor at Shark’s Island, where some few final preparations for the voyage had to be made.  Fritz here took a pen and wrote: