Straining and terror were in her eyes—then sudden light, a miracle of light and hope, then her cry.
Bellair seemed to see it in her mind—the smudge upon the horizon—before he turned. It was there—a blur on the thin grey line.
To lift the oars was like raising logs of oak, but he shipped the pair at last, listening for the words of the others and watching their faces. It seemed simpler than straining his eyes to the East. Fleury tried to raise the overcoat from the bottom of the boat, but it fell from his hands, and he sank back smiling:
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’re coming. They’ll see us soon.”
To Bellair it was like seeing a ghost, that smile of Fleury’s. It meant something that in the future would be quite as important to him as the ship’s bearing down to lift them up. He pulled toward the east—felt the old fainting come, pulled against that,—to the east, until a low, thundering vibration was all about him, like the tramp of death. Perhaps it was that—the thought flickered up into form out of the deep blur.... He was drinking water again. This time he did not fight.
“You may as well have yours, Bellair, man,” Fleury was saying, “and you need not row. They’re coming. It’s a ship coming fast. There is light for them to see us well—if they do not already——”
“But you haven’t drunk!”
“Bless you, I’ll drink now.”
The woman handed him the water. The cup was in his hand. He covered merely the bottom of the cup, and made much of it as if it were a full quart.
“The fact is—I’m not thirsty,” he said pitifully, when he saw their faces.