"Dalton, you are safe! it may be that I perish: I knew you would never
sacrifice your ship for your own life, so I have done it for you. Go
with the Jewess, your daughter, and the Preacher, immediately to Cecil
Place, to the small passage leading to the purple chamber, and demand
admittance. You are pardoned--and all the rest may leave the island,
provided they depart before the hour of one."
The Buccaneer apparently heard it not: the communication made no visible
impression upon him; he stood in the same position as before. Even
Springall spoke no word, although his feeling of attachment to Dalton
was rendered sufficiently obvious by his creeping close to his side, and
grasping his arm with a gesture which said, "I will not be separated
from you."
At this moment a cry arose from the beach, and, though the flames were
fading, it could be seen that several of the men had rushed to the
water's edge, and assisted a creature to the shore who was unable to
struggle longer for himself; soon, however, he contrived to mount the
cliff on which Dalton still remained a living statue of despair, and
faint, dripping, unable to utter a single word, Robin stood, or rather
drooped, by the side of the Buccaneer. He came too soon; Dalton,
irritated, maddened by the loss of his ship, was unable to appreciate
the risk which the Ranger had run, or the sacrifice he had made. He
thought but of what he had lost, not of what he had gained; and saw in
Robin only the destroyer of his vessel, not the obtainer of his long
sought-for pardon. Urged by uncontrollable frenzy, he seized his
preserver with the grasp and determination of a desperate man, and,
raising him from the ledge, would have hurled him over the cliff, had
not one, weak and gentle, yet with that strength to which the strongest
must ever yield, interposed to thwart his horrid purpose. It was
Barbara, who clung to her father's arm: feeble as she was, the
death-throes of the gallant vessel had frighted her and her companion
from their retirement, and she now came, like the angel of mercy,
between her parent and his ill-directed vengeance. When the Buccaneer
found that his arm was pressed, his impulse was to fling off the hand
that did it; but when he saw who it was that stayed him, and gazed upon
the bloodless face and imploring eyes of his sweet daughter, he stood a
harmless unresisting man, subdued by a look and overpowered by a touch.
Barbara never was a girl of energy, or a seeker after power. She
considered obedience as woman's chief duty--duty as a child to the
parent--as a wife to the husband; and, perhaps, such was her timidity,
had there been time to deliberate, she would have trembled at the bare
idea of opposing her father's will, though she would have mourned to the
end of her days the result of his madness; but she acted from the
impulse of the moment. Nothing could be more touching than the sight of
her worn and almost transparent figure, hanging on her father's dark and
muscular form, like a frail snow-wreath on some bleak mountain.