had given up all hope. Moran held grimly to the wheel as a mere
matter of form. Wilbur stood at her side, his clinched fists thrust
into his pockets. The eyes of both were fixed on the yellow line of the
distant beach. By and by Moran turned to him with an odd smile.

"We're a strange pair to die together," she said. Wilbur met her eyes
an instant, but finding no reply, put his chin in the air as though he
would have told her she might well say that.

"A strange pair to die together," Moran repeated; "but we can do that
better than we could have"--she looked away from him--"could have LIVED
together," she finished, and smiled again.

"And yet," said Wilbur, "these last few weeks here on board the
schooner, we have been through a good deal--together. I don't know," he
went on clumsily, "I don't know when I've been--when I've had--I've been
happier than these last weeks. It is queer, isn't it? I know, of course,
what you'll say. I've said it to myself often of late. I belong to the
city and to my life there, and you--you belong to the ocean. I never
knew a girl like you--never knew a girl COULD be like you. You don't
know how extraordinary it all seems to me. You swear like a man, and you
dress like a man, and I don't suppose you've ever been associated with
other women; and you're strong--I know you are as strong as I am. You
have no idea how different you are to the kind of girl I've known.
Imagine my kind of girl standing up before Hoang and those cutthroat
beach-combers with their knives and hatchets. Maybe it's because you are
so unlike my kind of girl that--that things are as they are with me. I
don't know. It's a queer situation. A month or so ago I was at a tea in
San Francisco, and now I'm aboard a shark-fishing schooner sinking in
Magdalena Bay; and I'm with a girl that--that--that I--well, I'm with
you, and, well, you know how it is--I might as well say it--I love you
more than I imagined I ever could love a girl."

Moran's frown came back to her forehead.

"I don't like that kind of talk," she said; "I am not used to it, and
I don't know how to take it. Believe me," she said with a half laugh,
"it's all wasted. I never could love a man. I'm not made for men."

"No," said Wilbur, "nor for other women either."

"Nor for other women either."

Wilbur fell silent. In that instant he had a distinct vision of Moran's
life and character, shunning men and shunned of women, a strange, lonely
creature, solitary