The dawn awoke Johnson, who remained seated for some time motionless, with his open eyes fixed upon the sea half-way to the horizon. As he continued gazing, a wild smile of joy kindled up his face and parted his cracked lips into a grin so extravagant, so indescribable, that it converted his face into a likeness of humanity as repulsive and unreal as an ugly paper mask.

He thrust his bony fingers into Holdsworth’s collar and shook him violently, whilst he pointed to the sea with his right hand.

“Look! look!” he cried. “Wake up! wake up! there is the land! See the houses, master! and the trees!... O Jesus! how green they are! Wake up, I say!”

Holdsworth started up violently and shook himself, with a mighty effort, clear of the benumbing torpor that had weighed him down throughout the night. He stared in the direction indicated by Johnson, then rubbed his eyes furiously with his knuckles, and stared again, but could see nothing but the ocean growing blue under the gathering light in the east, and stretching its illimitable surface to the horizon.

“Come, master, let’s get the oars out. Why, where have we drifted? O Lord, see the trees! how green and beautiful! I reckon there’s water there—and I’ll strip and souse in it! Will they see us? Wave your hat!”

He took off his own and brandished it furiously. But all on a sudden he let fall his arm—he stretched his head forward, and his glassy eyes seemed to protrude from their sockets; his breath went and came shrilly through his open mouth; and then, giving a scream, he shrieked, “It’s gone! it’s gone!” and as if the disappointment were a blow dealt him by some heavy instrument, he gave a great gasp, collapsed, and fell like a bundle of rags from his seat.

The fit of convulsive trembling that had seized Holdsworth passed; he caught sight of the boy lying on his side, with his eyes, wide open, fixed upon his face. The child was pointing to his throat. Holdsworth raised him and laid him along the seat, not conceiving that the little creature had fallen from his resting-place during the night, but that he had placed himself in that position the better to rest his limbs.

He moistened his lips with rum, but on looking attentively at his face, perceived indications denoting approaching death as clearly as though the piteous message was written upon his brow. This perception gave him exquisite misery. The bright eyes of the child, suggesting sweet memories of the little wife he had left at Southbourne, had endeared the boy to him; he had been his playmate and companion on the “Meteor;” he had watched the deep and beautiful love of the mother; and her death, recent as it was, had imparted the deepest pathos to the little orphan, and made his claims upon Holdsworth’s protection and love infinitely eloquent and appealing. That he should be dying now—now that the bright sun was climbing the brilliant morning sky—dying for want of a cup of water, a morsel of bread—dying without a mother’s love to enfold him in his last struggle and waft his young and innocent soul to God on the wings of a prayer, such as her agony, her devotion only could dictate—oh, it was too pitiful!

“My little boy—look up!—tell me—do you suffer? Where is the pain? Is it in your throat? Oh my poor innocent!”

His tears blinded him. He took his handkerchief and dipped it into the sea and laid it upon the child’s throat.

The little creature seemed to feel his love, for he made a movement as if he would nestle against him, and smiled wanly, but could not speak. His young dying face was an unbearable sight, and Holdsworth, groaning, gazed wildly around the horizon as if there—or there—or there—must be the ship sent by God to save the boy’s life!

A long hour passed; the child still lived, and Holdsworth hung over him, heedless of the other poor creature who had awakened to consciousness, but yet lay in a heap, supporting his head against the stanchion of a thwart, and watching his companions with glazed eyes. Then a craving for food mastered Holdsworth, and he looked at the biscuit, but had yet sufficient control over himself not to touch it, knowing the penalty of increased thirst that must follow the absorption of the brine into his stomach. He went to the locker and plunged his arm into the water that half filled it, and groped about in search of he knew not what; something to appease his craving might be there; but he found nothing but slimy pieces of biscuit and the broken bottles.

In a sudden fury of hunger he tore off his boot and cut a piece of the leather from the top of it, and began to chew it.

The mere act of mastication somewhat diminished his suffering, and he returned to the boy. No marked change had occurred within the hour, but, imperceptible as the departure might be, it was only too evident that the child was dying. Thirst, exposure, and grief—for there had been something so akin to a heart-broken expression in the little fellow’s eyes when he stared at the sea, expecting his mother to rise from it, that it would be impossible to doubt the keenness of his sorrow—these things had done their work.

Holdsworth bathed his face and throat with salt water, and again offered to moisten his lips with rum; but the boy made a gesture of dissent. Indeed the rum served no other end than to irritate his lips and his tongue, which was swollen and discoloured.

As the day wore on, the torment of thirst abated in Holdsworth, and Johnson also seemed to suffer less. The first agony which thirst brings with it, and which endures for two or three days, was passing; the next stage would be a kind of insensibility to the craving for water; but this would presently be followed by a renewal of the suffering in its sharpest form, which would continue until death ended it.

Throughout the afternoon, Holdsworth remained at the side of the boy, who lay with half-closed eyes and no movement of the body, save the faint rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. They were neither of them much more than skeletons, and so ashen was the complexion of Holdsworth, so lustreless his eyes, so wild and gaunt and ragged his whole face with the grisly beard, the white lips, the livid hollows beneath the eyes, and the twisted knotted hair upon his forehead and down his back, that he seemed much nearer to death than the child, whose infancy saved his face from being made actually repulsive by suffering.

Before sunset the boy became delirious, and mouthed shocking gibberish, being unable to articulate. For a whole half-hour this babbling lasted, and then died out, and the boy grew conscious. Holdsworth supported his head on his knee, but he slightly twisted it round to look at the sun, which was just then resting, a great orb of burning gold, upon the line of the horizon. He watched the sun intently, undazzled by the splendour, until it vanished, when he uttered a low wailing cry and stretched his arms out to it. Holdsworth felt his little body trembling, and some convulsive movements passed through him. Holdsworth kissed his forehead, and the boy smiled, and with that smile his spirit passed away.

When he could not doubt that he was dead, Holdsworth removed the little jacket from the child’s back, covered his face with it, and laid him in the bottom of the boat.

The mere exertion of doing this made him fall half-swooning upon a seat, on which Johnson came staggering over the thwarts and gave him some rum. There was now no more than a quarter of a pint left in the bottle.

“Master,” said the man, bringing his lips close to Holdsworth’s ear, “if I die first, please throw my body overboard. I don’t like the notion of drifting about in this boat maybe for weeks, and becoming a sight not fit to be looked at, if e’er a ship should come by.”

“I shan’t live to do you that service,” muttered Holdsworth. “I don’t feel as if I could last out much longer.”

“The curse of God is on us!” said Johnson. “There’s nothing but calms, and to think of two being left out o’ seven!”

The night fell quickly. At about ten o’clock a breeze came up from the north, and blew coolly and gratefully over the burning heads of the two men. It took the boat aback, and Holdsworth, acting from sheer instinct, put her before it, and hauling the sheet aft, steered east. No clouds came up with the wind; it was a summer breeze which might lull at any moment, or veer round, perhaps, to the south-west, and bring up a change of weather.

Lying pretty close to the wind the boat required no steering, which was fortunate, for the yoke-lines soon slipped out of Holdsworth’s hands, and a torpor stole over him, which, without actually suspending his consciousness, rendered his perceptions dreamy and useless. He rested with his back against the side of the boat, his head upon his breast, and his eyes half closed. Johnson crouched near the mast.

The breeze proved steady during the night, but died away towards the small hours; then, at daybreak, sprang up afresh from the west. The heeling over of the boat aroused the two men, who languidly, and with gestures terribly significant of their growing indifference to their fate, dipped the sail, and again let the boat lie close to save the trouble of steering her.

When the morning was a little advanced, Johnson crept to the side of the dead boy and groped about him.

“What are you doing?” cried Holdsworth fiercely.

“Feeling if there isn’t a piece of ship’s bread in his pockets,” answered the man doggedly, and looking up with a wolfish light in his sunken eyes.

“Let him alone!” said Holdsworth.

The man dragged himself away reluctantly, grumbling to himself, and resumed his place near the mast, keeping his eye steadfastly fixed on the dead body.

A sick shudder passed through Holdsworth as he observed the man’s peculiar stare, and sinking on his knees, he uncovered the child’s face and inspected it attentively, to satisfy himself that he was actually dead. He then raised him in his arms with the intention of casting him overboard. But Johnson came scrambling over to him and gripped him by the wrist.

The expression of his face, made devilish by suffering, was heightened to the horribly grotesque by the action of his mouth, which gaped and contorted ere he could articulate.

“What are you going to do? Keep him!” he exclaimed.

“Why?” answered Holdsworth, looking him full in the face.

But the man could not deliver the idea that was in his mind; he could only look it.

Holdsworth turned his back upon him and raised his burden on a level with the boat’s gunwale, but Johnson grasped the body with both hands.

“Let go!” said Holdsworth.

The man with an oath retained his hold. Weak as Holdsworth was, the passion that boiled in him at the desecration the half-maddened wretch was doing his poor little favourite, gave him temporarily back his old strength. He raised his foot, and, planting it in Johnson’s chest hurled him back; the man fell with a crash over the thwart, and lay stunned.

Holdsworth leaned over the boat’s side and let the body gently sink in the water; which done, he felt that his own turn was come, and dropped in the stern-sheets groaning, with drops in his eyes that scalded them.

But he still lived, and whilst his heart beat nature would assert herself. Towards the afternoon a torturing craving for food beset him, started him into life, and made him sit upright. He wiped the foam from his lips and beheld it discoloured with blood. He looked savagely around him like a wild beast, and, beholding nothing but the dry, bare seats, the boat’s hot interior with the gratings whitened by the heat of the sun, and underneath them the glistening water that bubbled coolly and with a maddening suggestion of sparkling, refreshing springs, he dragged his knife from his pocket, pierced his arm, and put his lips to the wound.