"I once lived for your sake; now you must for mine. I may save myself; but if you leave we shall both drown. Good-by, dearest. If I reach home first, I'll watch and wait till you come."
She felt him kiss her hand where she clung to her frail support, and then he disappeared in the darkness.
"Why did you let him go?" she said to Hunting—"you who have a preserver on?"
"O God, have mercy on me!" groaned the wretched man.
Annie now gave up all hope of escape, and indeed wished to die. She was almost sure that Gregory had perished, and she felt that her best-loved ones were in heaven.
She would have permitted herself to be washed away had not a sense of duty to live until God took her life kept her firm. But every moment it seemed that her failing strength would give way, and her benumbed hands loosen their hold.
"But," she murmured in the noblest triumph of faith, "I shall sink, not in these cold depths, but into my Saviour's arms."
Toward the last, when alone in the very presence of death, He seemed nearest and dearest. She could not bear to look at the dark, angry waters strewn with floating corpses. She had a sickening dread that Gregory's white face might float by. So she closed her eyes, and only thought of heaven, which was so near that its music seemed to mingle with the surging of the waves.
She tried to say a comforting word to Hunting, but the terror-stricken man could only groan mechanically, "God have mercy on me!"
Soon she began to grow numb all over. A dreamy peace pervaded her mind, and she was but partially conscious.