, he kissed those lips,
cold with semi-unconsciousness, wet with the salt brine of ocean; and it
seemed to him that the kiss was returned. Did ever the world see
stranger love passage,--these two alone, floating in the night mist;
alone on the vast expanse of a silent ocean, nothing between them and
death but the cork lifebelt of the one, and the far from inexhaustible
swimming powers of the other?

Would any of the boats be hanging about the scene of the wreck? Not
likely. Those which had escaped the havoc wrought by the first rush
were crowded to the water's edge. The panic-stricken castaways would
sheer off as far as possible, eager to pat all the distance they could
between themselves and the vortex of the foundering ship. Yet there was
just the chance, and to this end, as soon as he had recovered breath
Roden sent up a long, loud, penetrating call. His voice rang eerily
out, rendering the slimy stillness more dead, more oppressive than
before. But--no answer.

This he had expected. The hopelessness of their position was with him
throughout. It was useless exhausting his forces in swimming hither or
thither; wherefore he employed just enough movement to enable him to
keep himself, and Mona, comfortably afloat. Again he raised his voice
in a louder, clearer call.

Stay! What was that? Echo? Echo from the vastness of the liquid
solitude? No. It was not an echo.

There floated out through the mist a fainter, shriller cry. Roden's
pulses beat like a hammer, and a rush of blood surged to his head. The
boats had waited around, then? They would be picked up, saved--for the
present. Again he shouted, long and loudly.

And now a strange, awesome, wonderful thing befell. Through the
enshrouding mist there darted a nebulous expanding ray, as from the disc
of some mighty lantern, and upon the curtain of vapour was silhouetted,
black and gigantic, the horizontal form of a coffin; and rising from it
and falling back again, the head and shoulders of a man, of huge
proportions, black as night. Heavens! what appalling shade of darkness
was this, haunting the drear, horrible, inky surface of that slimy sea?

The Thing bore down upon them, was almost over them. Roden, convinced
that this new horror was a mere illusion begotten of the mist and his
own exhausted state, closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them
again it had vanished.

But in its place was something else. Brighter and brighter shone