rd on the sand, and, as she rose, an enormous roller lifted the
boat upright into the air, and, breaking, dashed it keel downwards on the
beach at her side--empty!

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

HELEN uttered a shriek of agony, and her knees smote together, and she
would have swooned on the spot but for the wind and the spray that beat
against her.

To the fearful stun succeeded the wildest distress. She ran to and fro
like some wild animal bereaved; she kept wringing her hands and uttering
cries of pity and despair, and went back to the boat a hundred times; it
held her by a spell.

It was long before she could think connectedly, and, even then, it was
not of herself, nor of her lonely state, but only, Why did not she die
with him? Why did she not die instead of him?

He had been all the world to her; and now she knew it. Oh, what a friend,
what a champion, what a lover, these cruel waves had destroyed!

The morning broke, and still she hovered and hovered about the fatal
boat, with great horror-stricken eyes, and hair flying to the breeze; and
not a tear. If she could only have smoothed his last moments, have spoken
one word into his dying ear! But no! Her poor hero had died in going to
save others; died thinking her as cold as the waters that had destroyed
him.

Dead or alive he was all the world to her now. She went, wailing
piteously, and imploring the waves to give her at least his dead body to
speak to and mourn over. But the sea denied her even that dismal
consolation.

The next tide brought in a few more fragments of the wreck, but no corpse
floated ashore.

Then, at last, as the waves once more retired, leaving, this time, only
petty fragments of wreck on the beach, she lifted up her voice, and
almost wept her heart out of her body.

Such tears as these are seldom without effect on the mind; and Helen now
began to rebel, though faintly, against despair. She had been quite
crushed, at first, under the material evidence--the boat driven empty by
the very wind and waves that had done the cruel deed. But the heart is
averse to believe calamity and especially bereavement; and very ingenious
in arguing against that bitterest of all woes. So she now sat down and
brooded, and her mind fastened with pathetic ingenuity on every
circumstance that could bear a favorable construction. The mast had not
been broken; how, then, had it been lost? The body had not come ashore.
He had had time to get to the wreck before the