As they floated on, his eye, ceaselessly roving the waters, caught sight of a brown object rising and falling, tumbling and turning with the helpless look of a once living thing driven and tossed. A freak of the sea brought it nearer. Another freak of the sea turned the brown object over. He saw that it was Hano, dead. He wondered if all the other denizens of the island had met a like fate. Of course, the water could not reach them as it had reached Hano, and Beekman, and Truda, but the earthquake--then, as he speculated hazily, the sun suddenly appeared. The black bank of cloud was riven and torn. Its greater moiety drifted to leeward, driven by some strange and powerful wind of the upper air. Fortunately, where they floated there was but a gentle breeze.
The warmth, the rest, it may be, he knew not what, revived the woman. She opened her eyes, lifted her head, his left arm tightened about her. She bent to him.
"Is this another world?" she gasped brokenly.
"How did we come here?" Before he could answer, she cried, "I remember. The wave. What is this?" she asked after a time.
"A boat," he answered, and then he knew that it was the forward half of the wrecked whaleboat which had brought him to the island, had landed on the barrier, had been torn from the pinnacles of rock by the same sea that had overwhelmed them, and which had been thrust into his hand for their salvation.
"We shall die here in the water," said the girl, "but we shall die together."
"I think not. God, our God, has preserved us so far. He has given us this poor support. It can not be that this is the end."
It was almost the end of Beekman, in spite of his brave words; for, now that Truda was safe and alive, now that he had achieved the impossible, now that, by God’s will and her lover’s help, she had been brought through the maelstrom, he fainted dead away. His head fell back. His knees relaxed. His hand unclasped. His arm released her. But for that broken thwart, he would have slid away and out of sight. It was Truda’s turn. She caught him by the shoulder. She crouched down on the forward compartment and held him until consciousness returned. When he could think coherently, he remembered how he had put the air-tight tanks back, and he blessed God for having inspired him to that, at the time, useless action. It was that air-tight compartment which held them. Truda dragged his head free of the water and held him there until he recovered his strength a little. The sharp pain in his arm, which had been numbed, helped to keep him from fainting again.