X
The Giver of Life
"HE THAT EATETH OF THIS BREAD SHALL LIVE FOREVER"
Of the five specters in the boat three were without life. Those whose faint breathing indicated that they had not yet reached the point of death were too weak and indifferent to rid the boat of the bodies of the others. Ever since the homeward-bound whaler had struck a derelict in a gale of wind north of the Falklands and foundered, this little boat, surviving the shipwreck as by a miracle, had drifted on.
For three weeks in vain they had scanned the horizon for a sail. Their scanty supply of bread and water had been consumed in ten days. Thereafter they had nothing. The baby had died first, next a man whose arm had been broken by a falling spar in the disaster, and then the ship's cabin boy. The survivors were a man and a woman. They were both far gone. The woman was plainly dying. The man kept himself up by sheer exercise of will.
Their drifting had been northward toward warmer seas. It was winter in their home land and, though they knew it not, Christmas day. There the tropic sun blazed overhead from an absolutely cloudless sky. There was no vestige of breeze to stir the canvas of the solitary sail or ripple the glassy surface of the smoothed out ocean. The boat lay still. Not even the iron man at the helm could have lifted an oar. It had been dead calm for days. Speech there was none except in the gravest necessity. To talk connectedly was impossible.
After scanning the horizon for the thousandth time the man's burning eyes sought those of the woman at his feet. He was astonished to find them open. Her mouth was working, her parched lips strove to form words. He dropped the tiller which his hand had grasped mechanically, and which was useless since there was no way on the boat, and bent his head lower. Some sudden recrudescence of strength which the dying sometimes receive came to the woman.
"Death," she whispered. "Glad." She turned her head slightly and saw the form of the child. "The Baby—and—I—together."
The man nodded. Tenderly he laid his hot wasted hand on the woman's fevered brow.
"A priest," she said, looking up at him uncomprehendingly.