The morning stole away. Very soon after I had buried the Captain I lowered the lamp, and sent the Danish flag we had brought with us to the head of the little mast, where it blew out bravely, and promised to boldly court any passing eye that might be too distant to catch a sight of our flat platform of raft. I then got breakfast, and induced Helga to eat and drink. Somehow, whether it was because of the sick complaining Captain, with his depressing menace of death, being gone, or because of the glad sunshine, the high marbling of the heavens, full of fine weather, and the quiet of the sea, with its placid heave of swell and its twinkling of prismatic ripples, my heart felt somewhat light, my burden of despondency was easier to carry, was less crushing to my spirits. What to hope for I did not know. I needed no special wisdom to guess that if we were not speedily delivered from this raft we were as certainly doomed as though we had clung to the barque and gone down in her. Yet spite of this there was a stirring of hope in me. It seemed impossible but that some ship must pass us before the day was gone. How far we had blown to the southward and westward during the gale I could not have told, but I might be sure we were not very distant from the mouth of the English Channel, and therefore in the fair way of vessels inward and outward bound, more particularly of steamers heading for Portuguese and Mediterranean ports.

But hour after hour passed, and nothing hove into view. The sun went floating from his meridian into the west, and still the horizon remained a blank, near, heaving line, with the sky whitening to the ocean rim. Again and again Helga sought the boundary, as I did. Side by side we would stand, she holding by my arm, and together we gazed, slowly sweeping the deep.

'It is strange!' she once said, after a long and thirsty look. 'We are not in the middle of the ocean. Not even the smoke of a steamer!'

'Our horizon is narrow,' answered I. 'Does it exceed three miles? I should say not, save when the swell lifts us, and then, perhaps, we may see four. Four miles of sea!' I cried. 'There may be a dozen ships within three leagues of us, all of them easily within sight from the maintop of the Anine, were she afloat. But what, short of a straight course for the raft, could bring this speck of timber on which we stand into view? This is the sort of situation to make one understand what is signified by the immensity of the ocean.'

She shivered and clasped her hands.

'That I—that we,' she exclaimed, speaking slowly and almost under her breath, 'should have brought you to this pass, Mr. Tregarthen! It was our fate by rights—but it ought not to be yours!'

'You asked me to call you Helga,' said I; 'and you must give me my Christian name.'

'What is it?' she asked.

'Hugh.'

'It is a pretty name. If we are spared, it will be sweet to my memory while I have life!'