The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

38 THB 1I0lfOllANIAC,
ing himself on his raft, and fixedly, determinately questioning
himself upon what he saw, he could no longer doubt
its reality. .
One after another they rose - the men, the boys, the
fierce combatants, and, last of all, the savage skipper himself.
He rose by the side of a fair young boy, a nephew
of his own, and the only being for whom he had evcr
seemed to feel the kindling of human feeling. Often and
often had Tom gazed admiringly on this gentle child, and
many kindly little officcs had been interchanged between
them. The poor sailor-boy sometimes wished he were so
fair and so fine, and so well off, that people might speak
gently to him, and love him as they did Edward; but
Edward, with a child's tender instinct, realized the desolate
boy's feeling, and sought of him the little offices of
good will which he needed of the crew; and now Tom
beheld him - him, the cherished, beautiful idol of the terrible
captain; him, whom neither love, nor power, nor
grandness could save - Hoating upward in the dewy air, a
lovely but transparent shadow; yet, 0, how real, how
very, very real did that passing shadow make the whole
phantom band appear to the gazer!
On they passed, close by the raft on which he knelt, in
slow and solemn march, yet seeming to be bome along by
no volition or movement of their own. They tumed neither
to the right nor to the left; their COUlse was evidently
ascending, yet they moved in an angle which brought them
almost in a sweeping circle ahead of his little raft. They
spoke not, they stirred not. Their faces were pale, their
eyes were fixed, the.ir lips were closed, and their forms
were utterly motionless. In vain he easayed to speak as
the phantom band swept by him; his parched lips refused
their office; his choking throat swelled to suffocation; but
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