'Arc_, if she was still afloat; then to climb
aboard and hunt for provisions and life preservers or something to use
for a raft. If he could do this, then they would be in a somewhat
better plight, at least for a time. He prayed that the _Jeanne D'Arc_
might still be alive.

The two talked little, leaving silences between them full of wonder.
The details of life, the ordinary personalities, were blotted out.
Without explanation or speech of any kind, they understood each other.
They were not, in this hour, members of a complex and artificial
society; they were not even man and woman; they were two souls stripped
of everything but the need for fortitude and sweetness.

At last came the dawn. Slowly the blue curtain of night lifted,
lifted, until it became the blue curtain of sky, endlessly far away and
far above. A twinkling star looked down on the cup of ocean, glimmered
a moment and was gone. The light strengthened. A pearly, iridescent
quiver came upon the waters, repeating itself wave after wave, and
heralded the coming of the Lord Sun over the great murmuring sea. As
the light grew, they could see a constantly widening circle of ocean,
of which they were the center. As they rose and fell with the waves,
the horizon fell and rose to their vision, dim and undefined. Hand in
hand they floated in vaporous silver.

"The day has come at last, thank God!" breathed James.

"Yes, thank God!" answered the girl.

"Are you very cold?"

"The sun will soon warm us."

"Where did you learn to swim?"

"In England, mostly at the Isle of Wight, but I'm not half such a
dolphin as you are."

"Oh, well, boys have to swim, you know, and I was a boy once," Jim
answered awkwardly. Presently he asked, and his voice was full of awe:
"Have you ever seen the dawn--a dawn like this--before?"

"Never one like this," she whispered.

When daylight came, they found they had not traveled far from the scene
of the night's disaster; or, if they had, the _Jeanne D'Arc_ had
drifted with them. She was still afloat, and just as the sun rose they
saw her, apparently not far away, tossing rudderless to the waves.
There was no sign of the ship's boats.

At the renewed miracle of light, and at sight of the yacht, Jimmy's
hopes were reborn. His spirit bathed in the wonder of the day and was
made strong again. The night with its horrors of struggle and its
darkness was past, forgotten in the flush of hope that came with the
light.