y--strangely, mysteriously, awesomely, but most unequivocally,
happy.

"We are not altogether without supplies," said Roden, almost
light-heartedly, as he produced the water-tight cartridge bag and began
to extract some of its contents, using the utmost care lest a drop of
sea water should by any chance be splashed upon the latter. "But we
must be as sparing of them as we know how, for Heaven only can tell how
long our cruise is likely to last. If any of the boats of the
_Scythian_ are picked up we shall be searched for."

"And if not?"

"We must take our chance. We cannot be out of the track of the mail
lines."

His hopeful tone was full of comfort to Mona, who quite overlooked the
vastness of ocean, and the comparatively small area commanded from the
bridge of a mail steamer, also the well-nigh invisibility of so small an
object as the hatch of a ship, which, presenting a flat surface, would
hardly attract attention even at a very short distance. She ate a
morsel of the biscuit and concentrated soup, and sipped a little of the
weak spirit and water out of the pewter flask, then declared that she
felt able to go for a long time without more.

"But what are you doing, dearest?" she cried, as having satisfied
himself that she was in earnest, he had deliberately shut up and
replaced the supplies. "No, no, I won't allow that. You shall not
starve yourself."

"I don't want anything; not yet, at any rate. The rest has set me up
more than food would do."

But to that sort of pleading Mona would not for a moment listen. Not
another morsel would she touch until he had taken his share, she vowed.
Besides, putting the matter on the very lowest and most selfish grounds,
if he starved himself, how would he keep up his strength to watch over
her?

This told. He yielded, or pretended to, at any rate, to the extent of a
slight moisten from the flask.

"I don't want any food; I couldn't eat, even if we had enough to last us
a year."

This was simply the truth. The man's high-strung nerves, with the
excitement and peril, and consciousness of the success with which
single-handed he had met and so far overcome the latter, had thrown him
into a state of strange exaltation which lifted him above mere bodily
cravings. There was something too of a sensuous witchery, a
fascination, in floating there in the warm lapping heave of the tropical
waters, rising all smoothly in imperceptible undulations. It was as
though th