Thus
secure for the present, and waiting only for the rising
of the breeze, of which the setting sun had given promise,
the sailors once more snatched their hasty refreshment,
while two of their number were sent aloft to keep a
vigilant look-out along the circuit embraced by the
enshrouding headlands.
During the whole of the day the cousins had continued on
deck clasped in each other's arms, and shedding tears of
bitterness, and heaving the most heart-rending sobs at
intervals, yet but rarely conversing. The feelings of
both were too much oppressed to admit of the utterance
of their grief. The vampire of despair had banqueted on
their hearts. Their vitality had been sucked, as it were,
by its cold and bloodless lips; and little more than the
withered rind, that had contained the seeds of so many
affections, had been left. Often had Sir Everard and De
Haldimar paused momentarily from the labour of their
oars, to cast an eye of anxious solicitude on the scarcely
conscious girls, wishing, rather than expecting, to find
the violence of their desolation abated, and that, in
the full expansion of unreserved communication, they were
relieving their sick hearts from the terrible and crushing
weight of woe that bore them down.
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