The sun blazed on his downward stoop, with a muster of clouds rolling to overtake him before he could touch the edge of the world. In due time full storm would come as surely as would the night.
Christian over the gunwale stared down. He muttered to himself; whenever a white sea-bird swooped near he looked up and laughed again. Wild and eager, his glance turned ever to the westward sea, and never looked he to the sky above with its threat of storm, and naught cared he for the peril of death sweeping up with every wave.
A dark coast-line came forward, that Rhoda knew for the ominous place that had overshadowed Christian's life. The Isle Sinister rose up, a blot in the midst of lines of steady black and leaping white.
Over to the low sun the clouds reached, and half the sky grew splendid with ranges of burnished copper, and under it the waves leaped into furious gold. Rhoda's courage broke for the going down of her last sun; she wept and prayed in miserable despair for the life, fresh and young, and good to live, that Christian was wantonly casting away with his own. No hope dare live with night and storm joining hands, and madness driving on the cruelest coast known.
On they drove abreast of the Isle Sinister.
He clung swaying to the tiller, with groaning breath, gaping with a wide smile and ravenous looks fixed intently. A terror of worse than death swept upon Rhoda. She fell on her knees and prayed, shrieking: 'Good Lord deliver us!'
Christian looked at her; for the only time with definite regard, he turned a strange dazed look to her.
A violent shock flung her forward; the dash of a wave took her breath; the boat lurched aslant, belaboured by wave on wave, too suddenly headed for the open sea. The tiller broke from his nerveless hands, and like a log he fell.
Rhoda's memory held after no record of what her body did then, till she had Christian's head on her knee. Had she mastered the great peril of the sail? had she fastened the rudder for drifting, and baled? she whose knowledge and strength were so scanty? Her hands assured her of what her mind could not: they were chafed by their frantic hurry over cordage.
She felt that Christian lived; yet nothing could she do for him, but hold him in her arms, giving her body for a pillow, till so they should presently go down together, and both be safely dead.