"Yes," she said; "I suppose I should thank--Him--and another. Have you
heard the story about--how Mr. Seymour saved me, I mean?"
"Some of it. While you were dressing yourself, I have been talking to
the officer who was in command of your boat. He was a brave man, Benita,
and I am sorry to tell you he is gone."
She grasped a stanchion and clung there, staring at him with a wild,
white face.
"How do you know that, Father?"
Mr. Clifford drew a copy of the _Natal Mercury_ of the previous day from
the pocket of his ulster, and while she waited in an agony he hunted
through the long columns descriptive of the loss of the _Zanzibar_.
Presently he came to the paragraph he sought, and read it aloud to her.
It ran:
"The searchers on the coast opposite the scene of the shipwreck report
that they met a Kaffir who was travelling along the seashore, who
produced a gold watch which he said he had taken from the body of a
white man that he found lying on the sand at the mouth of the Umvoli
River. Inside the watch is engraved, 'To Seymour Robert Seymour, from
his uncle, on his twenty-first birthday.' The name of Mr. Seymour
appears as a first-class passenger to Durban by the _Zanzibar_. He was
a member of an old English family in Lincolnshire. This was his second
journey to South Africa, which he visited some years ago with his
brother on a big-game shooting expedition.
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