hem, not a hundred yards
away, silently as a ship of the dead. Dan cried again, rising on his
rolling perch. But the hail died on his lips. He could see now. It
_was_ a ship of the dead. It was the derelict they had viewed from the
fancied security of the _Tampico's_ deck, a few short hours before. An
imprecation trembled upon Dan's lips. For the last half-hour Virginia,
who had crawled to a kneeling posture, had been watching Dan with
unlighted eyes. Now as he turned to her and pointed at the slowly
advancing vessel, she nodded slowly, as though comprehending his
meaning, and stretched out her arms to him.

Softly, quietly the bow of the hulk slid up and nuzzled gently among
the wreckage. Quickly Dan secured the litter to the bow by twisting a
length of wire cable through the rusty green fore-chains of the
derelict. Then gaining a footing in the mess of gear, he assisted the
girl to her feet on the tottering grating, and placed her hand on the
chains.

"Hold here tight," he said. She nodded, and Dan looked about for the
easiest way to the deck. It was not difficult to find. The end of the
jib-boom had dropped into the water, making an easy incline, and the
foremast had also fallen over the bow and was directly alongside. Both
were covered with sections of canvas and a maze of gear and rigging.

Dan clambered up, and then, lying flat across the bowsprit and the
mast, he put his arms under the girl's shoulders and literally pulled
her to his side. Hand in hand they slowly worked their way up among
the wreckage to the deck.

And there with the dawn beginning to glow rosily far on the eastern rim
of the slaty waste the girl sighed and sank to her knees; and Dan, his
head reeling with sleep and exhaustion, sank also. When the darkness
had all gone and the sun had cleared the horizon, the first level rays
flooded the sullen deck of a gray-green hulk, sodden, desolate, and
fell upon the faces of a man and woman sleeping, her head resting on
his shoulder, strands of her dark hair lying across his face.

CHAPTER XII

ALONE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

As the sun rose higher still they slept. The genial rays flowed over
them, drying their wet, clinging garments, filling their stiffened
frames with languorous warmth.

Finally the girl sighed and smiled. Half waking now, she thought she
was at home in her own bed. The sunlight always awakened her there.
She wondered if it was time for her maid to en