round her, still
drowsy and half stupefied, which perhaps was the best state she could
have been in in such an appalling emergency, the quivering tremor of the
deck had increased, and louder sounded the hollow booming of the water.
There was a list which nearly threw them off their feet. A wash of
water swept the scuttles, then the ship lurched slowly over to
starboard, and again the scuttles were under the brine. Surely they
were going--going. It would be awful, shut up there to drown like rats
in a hole, awful--awful; the same death up on deck in the free open air
seemed easy, pleasant, by comparison. Yet as he held her closely to
him, supporting her with his right arm while with his left he groped and
steadied his way--both their ways--ascending the companion stairs, Roden
Musgrave was conscious that even death in this fashion held no
bitterness for him. No, there was a strange, fierce, delirious
sweetness in the situation, which he would not have exchanged at that
moment for life and safety. When her absence was overlooked, when she
had been left to die, he alone had thrown away safety, life; he alone
had returned to die with her. And he had his reward. Were they
entering paradise together? It seemed like it at that moment, when they
were about to die together, she in his arms. In such lightning flashes
of thought did his mind whirl in the brief minute which had elapsed
since the opening of her cabin door.

In close, dank, airless folds, the heavy mist still lay around--dark,
impenetrable as a curtain. The night air, however, and the weird
eloquence of the utter solitude, the disordered deck, the great towering
funnel, the ruined deckhouses, the serpentine lapping of the water,
roused Mona from her semi-lethargy.

"Where are they all?" she said, a start of terror shaking her frame as
she looked around and began to realise her position.

"Gone! I only am left; and I am going to save you, if I can: if not, to
die with you; and death will be sweet."

Something of all that had been passing through his mind passed through
Mona's now. She pressed her lips to his, clasping him convulsively.

"You came back to die with me? Oh, my love! my love!"

She was quite calm as the whole truth struck upon her. Love seemed
utterly to dispel all terrors of death. But Roden did not intend that
it should come to that if he could help it. Keenly and carefully he had
been looking around. Every life-buoy had disappea