he air gathered about him and bore away their trophy of corruption.

By and by there were but two left of all that suffering crew--the
captain and the boy--and these two clung together like ghosts, defying
mortality. They strove to be patient and hopeful: if they could not
eat, they could drink, for the nights were dewy, and sometimes a mist
covered them--a mist so dense it seemed almost to drip from the rags
that poorly sheltered them. A cord was attached to the shrouds, the end
of it carefully laid in the mouth of a bottle slung in the rigging. Down
the thin cord slid occasional drops: one by one they stole into the
bottle, and by morning there was a spoonful of water to moisten those
parched lips--sweet, crystal drops, more blessed than tears, for _they_
are salt--more precious than pearls. A thousand prayers of gratitude
seemed hardly to quiet the souls of the lingering ones for that great
charity of Heaven.

There came a day when the hearts of God's angels must have bled for the
suffering ones. The breeze was fresh and fair; the sea tossed gayly its
foam-crested waves; sea-birds soared in wider circles, and the clouds
shook out their fleecy folds, through which the sunlight streamed in
grateful warmth: the two ghosts were talking, as ever, of home, of
earth, of land. Land--land anywhere, so that it were solid and broad.
Oh, to pace again a whole league without turning! Oh, to pause in the
shadow of some living tree!--to drink of some stream whose waters flowed
continually--flowed, though you drank of them with the awful thirst of
one who has been denied water for weeks, and weeks, and weeks!--for
three whole months--an eternity, as it seemed to them!

Then they pictured life as it might be if God permitted them to return
to earth once more. They would pace K----street at noon, and revisit
that capital restaurant where many a time they had feasted, though in
those days they were unknown to one another; they would call for coffee,
and this dish and that dish, and a whole bill of fare, the thought of
which made their feverish palates grow moist again. They would meet
friends whom they had never loved as they now loved them; they would
reconcile old feuds and forgive everybody everything; they held
imaginary conversations, and found life very beautiful and greatly to
be desired; and somehow they would get back to the little _cafe_ and
there begin eating again, and with a relish that brought the savory
tastes and smel