lker Maud guided and supported. In fact, I was aware of nothing
till I awoke, how long after I could not imagine, in my bunk with my
boots off. It was dark. I was stiff and lame, and cried out with pain
when the bed-clothes touched my poor finger-ends.

Morning had evidently not come, so I closed my eyes and went to sleep
again. I did not know it, but I had slept the clock around and it was
night again.

Once more I woke, troubled because I could sleep no better. I struck a
match and looked at my watch. It marked midnight. And I had not left
the deck until three! I should have been puzzled had I not guessed the
solution. No wonder I was sleeping brokenly. I had slept twenty-one
hours. I listened for a while to the behaviour of the _Ghost_, to the
pounding of the seas and the muffled roar of the wind on deck, and then
turned over on my ride and slept peacefully until morning.

When I arose at seven I saw no sign of Maud and concluded she was in the
galley preparing breakfast. On deck I found the _Ghost_ doing splendidly
under her patch of canvas. But in the galley, though a fire was burning
and water boiling, I found no Maud.

I discovered her in the steerage, by Wolf Larsen's bunk. I looked at
him, the man who had been hurled down from the topmost pitch of life to
be buried alive and be worse than dead. There seemed a relaxation of his
expressionless face which was new. Maud looked at me and I understood.

"His life flickered out in the storm," I said.

"But he still lives," she answered, infinite faith in her voice.

"He had too great strength."

"Yes," she said, "but now it no longer shackles him. He is a free
spirit."

"He is a free spirit surely," I answered; and, taking her hand, I led her
on deck.

The storm broke that night, which is to say that it diminished as slowly
as it had arisen. After breakfast next morning, when I had hoisted Wolf
Larsen's body on deck ready for burial, it was still blowing heavily and
a large sea was running. The deck was continually awash with the sea
which came inboard over the rail and through the scuppers. The wind
smote the schooner with a sudden gust, and she heeled over till her lee
rail was buried, the roar in her rigging rising in pitch to a shriek. We
stood in the water to our knees as I bared my head.

"I remember only one part of the service," I said, "and that is, 'And the
body shall be cast into the sea.'"

Maud looked at me, surprised an