Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/78

 what would become of him if the sea killed her?

All the while as this one thought kept place in her mind, to the exclusion of all others, she did all that it was possible to do to save the boat and herself. Once she was washed fairly out of the boat, but she clung to it with both hands, and climbed over its wet side, and went on again in the trough of the trembling waves. The flasks of wine and oil and the sack of flour had been washed over also, and were lost. Even in that moment of mortal jeopardy she felt a pang the more to think he would not have those things he so sorely needed.

What headway she was making, whether she was close inshore or out at sea, she could not tell; all was black as night around her. Now and then the lightning flashed, now and then she could see the whiteness of the hissing water; now and then the wind lulled, and she could hear the minute-guns of some ship in distress firing far away behind her. There is many a coral reef and many a sunken rock along the sea-shore of Maremma.

'Are the angels all dead that tend the stars?' she thought, in the vague fancy that