knees to the foot of the stairway. By
means of the newel-post I drew myself upright and listened. Near me
something moved and strangled. I fell upon it and found in my arms all
the softness of Margaret.

How describe that battle up the stairway? It was a crucifixion of
struggle, an age-long nightmare of agony. Time after time, as my
consciousness blurred, the temptation was upon me to cease all effort and
let myself blur down into the ultimate dark. I fought my way step by
step. Margaret was now quite unconscious, and I lifted her body step by
step, or dragged it several steps at a time, and fell with it, and back
with it, and lost much that had been so hardly gained. And yet out of it
all this I remember: that warm soft body of hers was the dearest thing in
the world--vastly more dear than the pleasant land I remotely remembered,
than all the books and all the humans I had ever known, than the deck
above, with its sweet pure air softly blowing under the cool starry sky.

As I look back upon it I am aware of one thing: the thought of leaving
her there and saving myself never crossed my mind. The one place for me
was where she was.

Truly, this which I write seems absurd and purple; yet it was not absurd
during those long minutes on the chart-room stairway. One must taste
death for a few centuries of such agony ere he can receive sanction for
purple passages.

And as I fought my screaming flesh, my reeling brain, and climbed that
upward way, I prayed one prayer: that the chart-house doors out upon the
poop might not be shut. Life and death lay right there in that one point
of the issue. Was there any creature of my creatures aft with common
sense and anticipation sufficient to make him think to open those doors?
How I yearned for one man, for one proved henchman, such as Mr. Pike, to
be on the poop! As it was, with the sole exception of Tom Spink and
Buckwheat, my men were Asiatics.

I gained the top of the stairway, but was too far gone to rise to my
feet. Nor could I rise upright on my knees. I crawled like any four-
legged animal--nay, I wormed my way like a snake, prone to the deck. It
was a matter of several feet to the doorway. I died a score of times in
those several feet; but ever I endured the agony of resurrection and
dragged Margaret with me. Sometimes the full strength I could exert did
not move her, and I lay with her and coughed and strangled my way through
to another resurrection.