Page:The Poison Belt - Conan Doyle, 1913.djvu/181

 146  in our minds. We saw, with vivid, merciless clearness, the relations between the past, the present, and the future—the lives that we had led and the lives which we would have to live. Our eyes turned in silent horror upon those of our companions and found the same answering look in theirs. Instead of the joy which men might have been expected to feel who had so narrowly escaped an imminent death, a terrible wave of darkest depression submerged us. Everything on earth that we loved had been washed away into the great, infinite, unknown ocean, and here were we marooned upon this desert island of a world, without companions, hopes, or aspirations. A few years' skulking like jackals among the graves of the human race and then our own belated and lonely end would come. "It's dreadful, George, dreadful!" the lady cried, in an agony of sobs. "If we had only passed with the others! Oh, why did you save us? I feel as if