Page:Left to Themselves (1891).djvu/151

 was exhausted, and besides that his shoulder had suffered a severe wrench. He lay on his back in the bottom of the boat, staring into the gloom; for the moon had gone, and only a shimmer in the atmosphere marked where she sulked, far up above. The lad set his teeth, to keep from crying out with pain and with the dreadfulness of a situation so novel to a boy reared like a hot-house plant.

"I wonder if we will ever get out of this alive?" he thought every now and then. But he answered Philip's solicitous questions as to his welfare with a tone that nobly feigned ease and hope. Gulping and struggling down any thing like a sob, his prompt "Yes, Philip," or "No, Philip," was the only sound that carried any comfort to Touchtone's heart. "There is no use in asking questions," he said to himself. "Philip don't know any more about what is before us than I do, and I guess he hates to have to tell me so."

By and by the dragging daylight began to whiten the air. The ocean gradually paled from inkiness to lead-color, and from lead-color to streaked gray, and the gray to a yeasty milk. The dashing waves had given place to a rolling