truggle to reach the yacht. It was a difficult and dangerous
task. The weight of Bivens's inert form drove his boots deep into the
mud, and the wind's gusts of increasing fury threatened at almost every
step to hurl them down. Again and again the waves broke on his face and
submerged them both. Bivens had ceased to move or make a sound. Stuart
couldn't tell whether he had been strangled by the freezing water or
choked into silence by his helpless rage.

At last he struggled up the gangway, tore the cabin door open,
staggered down the steps into the warm, bright saloon, and fell in a
faint at Nan's feet.

The doctor came in answer to her scream and lifted Bivens to his
stateroom, while Nan bent low over the prostrate form, holding his hand
to her breast in a close, agonising clasp, while she whispered:

"Jim, speak to me! You can't die yet, we haven't lived!"

He sighed and gasped:

"Is he alive?"

"Yes, in his stateroom there, cursing you with every breath."

The young lawyer closed his eyes, blinded with tears, murmuring over
and over again:

"Thank God!--Thank God!"

CHAPTER IV

THE MOCKERY OF THE SUN

Stuart refused to talk to Nan, went abruptly to his stateroom, and
spent a night of feverish dreams. His exhaustion was so acute, restful
sleep was impossible. Through the night his mind went over and over the
horror of the moment on that marsh when he had looked into the depths
of his own soul and seen the flames of hell.

Between the times of dozing unconsciousness, which came at intervals,
he wondered what had become of the two men in that disabled tender. He
waited with dread the revelation the dawn would bring. He rose with the
sun and looked out of his stateroom window. The bay was a solid sheet
of glistening ice. The sun was shining from a cloudless sky and the
great white field sparkled and flashed like a sea of diamonds.

What a mockery that sunshine! Somewhere out on one of those lonely
marshes it was shining perhaps on the stark bodies of the two men who
were eating and drinking and laughing the day before. What did Nature
care for man's joys or sorrows, hopes or fears? Beneath that
treacherous ice the tide was ebbing and flowing to the throb of her
even, pulsing heart. To-morrow the south wind would come and sweep it
all into the sea again.

He wondered dimly if the God, from whose hands this planet and all the
shining worlds in space had fallen, knew or cared? And then a flood of