"I sincerely hope you are right about it. I don't much fancy this raft for a place to spend the night. Will we be drowned on it, do you think?"
"No fear; we're all right. It can't sink. All we have to do is to keep a lookout for a boat and sing out for help. Why, there's five boats altogether, counting ours. Five boats, and it's just dark, not after six or seven o'clock at the most."
"How far from land are we?" she asked, seemingly cheered but still somewhat doubtful.
"Not far," I lied. I thought of a hundred and fifty miles of floating to get in—if the boats didn't pick us up. I began to experience that sinking feeling that comes to many when the outlook seems pretty bad.
The girl was silent for some time after this, and seemed to be thinking of her troubles, for once she gave a little gasp of complaint.
"Cheer up," I said; "don't give way to it yet. We'll be all right soon."
As the hours passed and no boat come near, I began to feel very nervous. I could see but a few fathoms distant, and knew the chances were growing less and less. I hailed the blackness, bawled out as loud as I could, keeping it up at minute intervals. The wind seemed to be going down, but the sea still ran quickly, and was high and strong, lifting the raft skyward at each roll, and then dropping it down gently into the hollow trough. We felt the wind only when on the top of the seas, and it chilled us; but the warm edge of the Gulf Stream soaked us, and we could stand it for a long time. The sea was as warm as milk.
How that long night passed I don't know. It seemed like eternity. Several times I lost consciousness, whether from exhaustion or from the blow I had received upon the head I cannot say. I held to the girl, and together we stood it out. Our lashings kept us upon the piece of platform remaining upon the two hollow iron cylinders comprising the raft.
The girl lost her power of speech some time during the night, and seemed to faint, her head dropping upon the slats of the platform. I held it up to keep the water from her nose and mouth, and finally propped her head so that little water broke over it. It was all I could do.
The raft swung around and around, sometimes with the sea on one side and then with it upon another. I felt for the oarlock, which is usually placed at either end to steer by, but it was gone. So also were the oars that had been placed between the cylinders and the platform. We simply had a float, that kept us bodily out of the sea, and that was all.