he remarked in a soothing tone that
the stars were coming out. They were. The breeze was sweeping clear the
sooty sky, breaking through the indolent silence of the sea.

The barrier of awful stillness which had encompassed us for so many days
as though we had been accursed, was broken. I felt that. I let myself
fall on to the skylight seat. A faint white ridge of foam, thin, very
thin, broke alongside. The first for ages--for ages. I could have
cheered, if it hadn't been for the sense of guilt which clung to all my
thoughts secretly. Ransome stood before me.

"What about the mate," I asked anxiously. "Still unconscious?"

"Well, sir--it's funny," Ransome was evidently puzzled. "He hasn't
spoken a word, and his eyes are shut. But it looks to me more like sound
sleep than anything else."

I accepted this view as the least troublesome of any, or at any rate,
least disturbing. Dead faint or deep slumber, Mr. Burns had to be left
to himself for the present. Ransome remarked suddenly:

"I believe you want a coat, sir."

"I believe I do," I sighed out.

But I did not move. What I felt I wanted were new limbs. My arms and
legs seemed utterly useless, fairly worn out. They didn't even ache. But
I stood up all the same to put on the coat when Ransome brought it up.
And when he suggested that he had better now "take Gambril forward," I
said:

"All right. I'll help you to get him down on the main deck."

I found that I was quite able to help, too. We raised Gambril up between
us. He tried to help himself along like a man but all the time he was
inquiring piteously:

"You won't let me go when we come to the ladder? You won't let me go
when we come to the ladder?"

The breeze kept on freshening and blew true, true to a hair. At daylight
by careful manipulation of the helm we got the foreyards to run square
by themselves (the water keeping smooth) and then went about hauling
the ropes tight. Of the four men I had with me at night, I could see now
only two. I didn't inquire as to the others. They had given in. For a
time only I hoped.

Our various tasks forward occupied us for hours, the two men with me
moved so slow and had to rest so often. One of them remarked that "every
blamed thing in the ship felt about a hundred times heavier than its
proper weight." This was the only complaint uttered. I don't know what
we should have done without Ransome. He worked with us, silent, too,
with a little smile frozen on his lips