"To reach him at last," she cried, "to die with him! To die together."
Then it seemed that into that quivering, nervous frame there came a giant's strength; it seemed as though the cords and sinews of her arms had become steel and iron, as though the little hands were vises in the power of their grip. "To die together," she thought again, as, with superhuman efforts, she forced her boat toward the battered, broken yawl.
Now, she was close to it--now!--then, with a crash her own boat was dashed against the larger one, its bow crushed in, in a moment, its stem lifted into the air. But, catlike, desperate, too, fighting fate with the determination of despair, she had seized the top of the yawl's side; had clung to it one moment while the sea thundered and broke against her feet below, and had then drawn herself up onto the deck over the side.
And he was there, lying half-in, half-out the little forecastle cuddy, bound and corded--insensible.
"I have found you, Sebastian," she whispered, her lips to his cold ones. "I have found you."
With an awful lurch the yawl heeled over, the man's body rolling like a log as it did so, and then Zara knew that the end had come. Even though he lived, nothing could save him now; his arms were bound tightly to his sides, the cords passing over his chest from left to right. He was without sense or power.
"Nothing can save him now--nor me," she said. "Nothing."
Then she forced her own little hands beneath those cords so that, thereby, she was bound to him; whereby if ever they were found, they would be found locked together; she grasping tightly, too, the top ply, so that neither wave, nor roll of sea, nor any force could tear them apart again. And if they were never found--still--still, nothing could part them more.
"Together," she murmured, for the last time, her own strength ebbing fast, "together forever. Together at the end. Always together now--in death!"