"How many will it hold?"
"Three, in a smooth sea, and with skilled handling. It nearly overturned when I and two others crossed from the island, a distance of three hundred yards."
"But we have ropes, clothes, perhaps some few pieces of wreckage. Can nothing be done to repair it?"
"Meaning that we draw lots to see who shall endeavor to escape to-night?"
"The men might even do that."
"Ah, yes—the men, of course. I think it hopeless. But, try it! Yes, certainly, try it!"
A pause, more eloquent than the most impassioned speech, showed how this frail straw, eddying in the vortex of their fate, might yet be clutched at. San Benavides, trying vainly to guess what was being said, blurted forth an anxious inquiry. His compatriot explained briefly. Somehow, the measured cadence of their talk had a less reliable sound than the vigorous Anglo-Saxon. They were both brave men. They had not scrupled to risk their lives in an enterprise where success beckoned even doubtingly. But they were lacking when all that remained to be settled was how best to die; in such an hour the men of an English speaking race will ever choose a fighting death.
This time, it was a woman who decided.
Iris rose to her feet. She brushed back the strands of damp hair from her face, and with deft hands made a rough-and-ready coil of her abundant tresses.
"Are you planning to send me with two others adrift in a boat, while seventeen men are left here?" she asked.