Would she ever awaken? How long would she continue in sleep? To some a dose of morphia professionally prescribed will yield a long night's rest not wholly unrefreshing, though the drug is obnoxious to the brain, which in time it murders. Therefore she might sleep into the early hours of the night.
But these were not his speculations. His mind was intent on one object, and he held the boat straight before the wind, waiting for her to look at him and rise, and point to the spot where his boy was.
It passed into about an hour before sunset.
From time to time the captain had laid his hand gently upon the girl's brow, believing she would open her eyes and speak to him. He was like a child whose grave or tragic act was beyond his mind's capacity to understand. He was painfully haggard, and sweat drops were on his forehead and cheeks, but the dreadful fire was always in his eyes. And once he stared fixedly over the port bow of the boat as though his poor brain had shaped the vision of his child: he stared as though he beheld the phantom, and when it vanished out of the perfidious cell which had created it he sighed and frowned.
He took no heed of sensation; thirst and hunger may have been his, but he never left the helm to drink or eat. At the hour I have named the westering sun was beginning to empurple the east, and he was steering toward the point where the evening star would rise. More than half the moon was hanging in a broken shape of dim pearl over the boat's bows. All at once the captain's ceaseless stare at the ocean brought his eyes to an object almost directly ahead. He was a sailor, and his afflicted reason could not deceive him. Right ahead and within half an hour's sail—so low seated was the gunwale of that boat—lay a small vessel, partly dismasted and deep sunk. She was painted black. Her lower masts were white, and both foresail and mainsail were hanging, but the trysail was stowed.
"He will be there! he will be there!" cried the captain in a voice that swept like a shriek from his lips, and as the words left him the girl, with a long, strange sigh, opened her eyes full upon the wild nightmare face that was on a line with her head, for he had sprung to his feet.
"He is there!" he shouted again.
Then looking down he saw her watching him, and had he been sane would have witnessed the awakening reason in her darkening into horror. She tried to sit up, but her body was heavy as lead.
"Oh, what is this? Where am I?" she asked, more in a mutter than in clear speech.
"He is there!" he cried, pointing with a frantic gesture, "and you have known it throughout your sleep. Look!" He stooped, put his hands under her arms and lifted her out of the bottom of the boat into the stern-sheets, against whose back-board she sank.