Page:She's all the world to me. A novel (IA shesallworldtome00cain 0).pdf/125

 was the great waste of waters now that the striding light was chasing the curling mists than when the night was dead and darkness covered the sea. On one side of them no other object on the waters was visible until sky and ocean met in that great half-circle far away. On the other side was the land which they called home—from which they had fled, to which they dared not return.

Still not a breath of wind. The boat was drifting south. The men came up from below. The cold white face on the deck looked up at them, and at heaven. "We must put it away," said one, in a low murmur. "Aye," said another. Not a second word was spoken. A man went below and brought up an old sail. Two heavy iron weights, used for holding down the nets, were fetched up from the hold. There was no singing out. They took up what lay there cold and stiff, and wrapped it in the canvas, putting one of the weights at the head and another at the feet. Silently one man sat down with a sail-maker's needle and string, and began to stitch it up.

"Will the string hold?" asked another; "is it strong enough?"

"It will last him this voyage out—it's a short one, poor fellow."

Awe and silence sat on the crew.

Danny, his eyes suffused with an unearthly light, watched their movements from the bow. When he was lifted aboard last night a dull, dense aching at his heart was all the consciousness he had, and then the world was dead to him. Later on a fluttering within him preceded the return of an agonizing sense. Had he not sent his