ll slab of wood--fighting, the one for his life,
the other for a life that was far more precious to him than his own.
And of all the horrific and heart-sickening acts which that pale orb has
witnessed, it can seldom have looked upon one more appalling.

Now Lambert made a frantic clutch at his adversary, hoping in his frenzy
of despair to drag the latter down with him. But abandoning his hold of
the raft for a moment Roden dived, then rising seized Lambert by the
neck from behind, battering his head against the hard wood. The
unfortunate surgeon, more than half stunned, relaxed his hold, and fell
back into the sea.

"Good-bye, Lambert," cried the other, with a glee that was hellish in
its ferocity. "Pity I haven't got Sonnenberg here to send after you.
Well, you and I are quits now, at any rate. Good-bye, Lambert!"

For reply came a frightful noise, a gurgling, gasping, inarticulate
yell. Then the struggles of the despairing wretch ceased. A boil of
bubbles came glittering up to the surface of the now moonlit water, then
they too ceased. Roden Musgrave and his unconscious charge were alone
together once more--alone on the dark, silent, midnight sea.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

"AIR, LIGHT, AND WAVE SEEMED FULL OF BURNING REST."

Morning dawned. The sun shot up from his liquid bed, a ball of fiery
splendour, purpling the vast immensity of a sailless ocean, shining down
with rapidly increasing and merciless heat upon the speck formed by the
impromptu raft amid the utter boundlessness of that blue-green, slimy,
and now most horrible expanse. Not another object was visible far or
near, not even so much as a stick of wreckage which might have come to
the surface. Had they drifted with some current far from the scene of
the night's awful disaster?

Roden Musgrave, supporting himself by resting a light grasp upon the
hatch, had been swimming mechanically all these hours, and well indeed
was it that the water in those semi-tropical seas was more than
ordinarily buoyant, for this and his coolness of brain had enabled him
to spare all superfluous waste of energy. He had managed to secure his
unconscious companion to the ring-bolts with a piece of cord which he
had thrust into his pocket in view of some such emergency, and this
timely precaution saved much expenditure of valuable strength in holding
her in her otherwise precarious position. Yet now, upon himself, the
night's exhaustion and horror were beginning t