Benita, an African romance by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
page 44 of 274 (16%)
page 44 of 274 (16%)
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"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. All who knew him then will join with us in deploring his loss. Mr. Seymour was a noted shot and an English gentleman of the best stamp. He was last seen by one of the survivors of the catastrophe, carrying Miss Clifford, the daughter of the well-known Natal pioneer of that name, into a boat, but as this |
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