"O God!" cried Bowdler, when he looked out at the sea. He was not a brave man; and he could not see it, when he looked; there was but a horror of great darkness, a thunder of sound, and a chilly creeping of salt-water up his legs, as if the great monster licked his victim with his lifeless tongue. Straight in front of them, at the very edge of the horizon, he thought the little clam-digger's fire opened a tunnel of greenish light into the night, "dull and melancholy as a scene in Hades." They saw the men sitting around the blaze with their hands clasped about their knees, the woman's figure alone, and watching.
"Mary!" cried the old man, in the shrill extremity of his agony.
His companion shivered.
"Take this from me, boy!" cried Doctor Bowdler, trying to tear off the life-preserver. "It's a chance. I've neither wife nor child to care if I live or die. You're young; life's beginning for you. I've done with it. Ugh! this water is deadly cold. Take it, I say."
"No," said the other, quietly restraining him.
"Can you swim?"
"In this sea?"—with a half-smile, and a glance at the tossing breakers.
"You'll swim? Promise me you'll swim! And if I come to shore and see Mary?"
Birkenshead had regained the reticent tone habitual to him.
"Tell her, I wish I had loved her better. She will understand. I see the use of love in this last hour."