'How,' she asked, as she sat by his side gazing out across the calm, waveless sea through the fast-coming tropic night, and watching the great stars--almost as big as northern moons---sparkling, incandescent like, in the blue heavens above--'how did you do it? I remember nothing till I found myself lying there,' and she pointed down to the white sand, from which there came, through the sultry night, the gentle hiss of the sea, 'and saw you lying near me, and dead, as I thought.'

'Nor do I remember, or only very little more than you can do. I dragged you from the saloon, and, after fixing a life-buoy on to each of us, leaped into the sea with you, striking out vigorously to avoid the ship. And I can recall my battlings with the waves for a few moments--only a few--then feeling my breath knocked out of me. And, then, nothing more until I came to and found you looking at me here. It was the life-buoys that saved us.'

'In God's mercy. Under His Providence. Yet--yet--if it were not wicked to say so--if it were not for my poor dear mother at home--I--should----'

'No, no!' he almost moaned. 'No, no! Not that!' Then, after a moment or so of silence, he said: 'Do you know how long we have been here? Can you guess?'

'This is the second night, I suppose,' she answered. 'When I came-to yesterday morning, I imagine it was the first one after the wreck.'

'Possibly. And have you seen nothing pass at sea, either near or far off?'

'Nothing. Yet I have gazed seaward all the time it has been light on each day. Where do you think we are?'

'If the island is uninhabited, I think it must be one of the Cormora group, since it can scarcely be part of the Chagos Archipelago--they are too far to the east. And all the others in the Indian Ocean--certainly in this part of it--are inhabited.'

She made no reply now--she did not say what almost every other woman in her position would undoubtedly have said--namely, that she hoped they would in some way be taken off the island. For, in absolute fact, she did not hope so. To be saved from this desolation, to be put on board some ship which might be going to any part of the world, even though that part should be England itself, meant leaving Gilbert behind--leaving him to his ocean grave. And she would not--certainly she would not yet--consent to believe that he had met with such a grave. The Emperor of the Moon was still there, a part of her above the water although she was almost turned upside down, or 'turned turtle,' as she knew the sailors called it, and--and--might not some of those who were in her when she struck be still sheltering, clinging to some portion of the wreck that happened to be above water? She did not know much about ships, this awful, fateful voyage being her only experience, wherefore she thought and hoped and prayed that such a chance as this which she imagined in her mind might be possible. While, too, she remembered that Gilbert and her uncle were both blind. Therefore, if they were still alive, they could not cast themselves into the sea to escape out of the vessel--they would not, indeed, know that there was an island close to them, and, probably, would imagine that the ship was wrecked upon some reef or rock, so that it would be doubly dangerous to venture to leave her. And, again, even if they could by any wild chance have guessed that there was an island near, how would they in their blindness have known which way to proceed to reach it?

Thus, by such arguments, she had endeavoured to solace her sad, aching heart, and now, as she rose to leave Stephen Charke for the night, she put into words the thoughts which had been present to her mind from almost the first moment she had discovered that they themselves were saved.