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- 2026-01-30T20:48:15.027Z
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- text
- thing he waved to her, pushing from the strand—and now, to the last
gallant, it still saluted her. But Felipe’s body floated to the marge,
with one arm encirclingly outstretched. Lock-jawed in grim death, the
lover-husband softly clasped his bride, true to her even in death’s
dream. Ah, heaven, when man thus keeps his faith, wilt thou be
faithless who created the faithful one? But they cannot break faith who
never plighted it.
It needs not to be said what nameless misery now wrapped the lonely
widow. In telling her own story she passed this almost entirely over,
simply recounting the event. Construe the comment of her features as
you might, from her mere words little would you have weened that
Hunilla was herself the heroine of her tale. But not thus did she
defraud us of our tears. All hearts bled that grief could be so brave.
She but showed us her soul’s lid, and the strange ciphers thereon
engraved; all within, with pride’s timidity, was withheld. Yet was
there one exception. Holding out her small olive hand before her
captain, she said in mild and slowest Spanish, “Señor, I buried him;”
then paused, struggled as against the writhed coilings of a snake, and
cringing suddenly, leaped up, repeating in impassioned pain, “I buried
him, my life, my soul!”
Doubtless, it was by half-unconscious, automatic motions of her hands,
that this heavy-hearted one performed the final office for Felipe, and
planted a rude cross of withered sticks—no green ones might be had—at
the head of that lonely grave, where rested now in lasting un-complaint
and quiet haven he whom untranquil seas had overthrown.
But some dull sense of another body that should be interred, of another
cross that should hallow another grave—unmade as yet—some dull anxiety
and pain touching her undiscovered brother, now haunted the oppressed
Hunilla. Her hands fresh from the burial earth, she slowly went back to
the beach, with unshaped purposes wandering there, her spell-bound eye
bent upon the incessant waves. But they bore nothing to her but a
dirge, which maddened her to think that murderers should mourn. As time
went by, and these things came less dreamingly to her mind, the strong
persuasions of her Romish faith, which sets peculiar store by
consecrated urns, prompted her to resume in waking earnest that pious
search which had but been begun as in somnambulism. Day after day, week
after week, she trod the cindery beach, till at length a double motive
edged every eager glance. With equal longing she now looked for the
living and the dead; the brother and the captain; alike vanished, never
to return. Little accurate note of time had Hunilla taken under such
emotions as were hers, and little, outside herself, served for calendar
or dial. As to poor Crusoe in the self-same sea, no saint’s bell pealed
forth the lapse of week or month; each day went by unchallenged; no
chanticleer announced those sultry dawns, no lowing herds those
poisonous nights. All wonted and steadily recurring sounds, human, or
humanized by sweet fellowship with man, but one stirred that torrid
trance—the cry of dogs; save which naught but the rolling sea invaded
it, an all-pervading monotone; and to the widow that was the least
loved voice she could have heard.
No wonder, that as her thoughts now wandered to the unreturning ship,
and were beaten back again, the hope against hope so struggled in her
soul, that at length she desperately said, “Not yet, not yet; my
foolish heart runs on too fast.” So she forced patience for some
further weeks. But to those whom earth’s sure indraft draws, patience
or impatience is still the same.
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