There was not the feeblest murmur of response. Yet he felt that, perhaps, one boatload at least might have sped away in safety.
"God help them!" he said, when the silence became once more insupportable. "He only knows where any of us are!"
"After all we'd been through!" she shivered in awe. "If only we two were really saved---- Oh, there must be land, somewhere about, if the Captain was trying to reach a port! But, of course, this isn't even a boat, and, perhaps, it will finally sink!"
He tried to summon an accent of hope to his voice.
"Oh, no; it will float indefinitely. It's sure to turn up somewhere in the end."
"We haven't food--or even water," she answered him, understandingly. "What shall we do to-morrow?"
"We are drifting rapidly northward. We may arrive somewhere by to-morrow.... You'd better sit down. It taxes your strength to stand."
"God help us all!" she suddenly prayed in a broken voice, and, sinking lower where she sat, was shaken by one convulsion of sobbing, in pity for all she had seen. She had no thoughts left for their earlier, personal encounter.
For a time Grenville stood there, braced to take the motion of the raft. The wind continued brisk and undiminished. Aided by tides, which had turned an hour earlier, to flow in its general direction, it drove the raft steadily onward over miles of gray, unresting sea.
The water slopped up between the slats whereon Elaine was sitting. She was cold, despite the tropic latitude. She was hopeful, only because she wished to contribute no unnecessary worry to the man.
Grenville at length sat down at her side, but they made no effort to converse. Elaine was exhausted by the sickening strain and the shock of that tragic end. For an hour or more she sat there limply, being constantly wet by the waves. She attempted, finally, to curl herself down and make a pillow of her arm, and there she sank into something akin to sleep.
Gently Grenville thrust out his foot and lifted her head upon the cushion of flesh above his ankle. The night wore slowly on. Three o'clock came grayly over the world-edge, where the waves made a scalloped horizon.
Slowly the watery universe expanded, as the dawn-light palely increased. By four Grenville's gaze could search all the round of the ocean, but nothing broke either sky or sea.