the sea.
The prostrate figure lay at the foot of the mast.

Rapidly the distance between the boat and the schooner was lessened
by the vigorous strokes of the seamen. They themselves felt an
interest in the result only less than that of Windham. Nearer and
nearer they came. At length the boat touched the schooner, and
Windham, who was in the bow, leaped on board. He hurried to the
prostrate figure. He stooped down, and with a strange unaccountable
tenderness and reverence he took her in his arms and raised her up.
Perhaps it was only the reverence which any great calamity may excite
toward the one that experiences such calamity; perhaps it was
something more profound, more inexplicable--the outgoing of the
soul--which may sometimes have a forecast of more than may be
indicated to the material senses. This may seem like mysticism, but
it is not intended as such. It is merely a statement of the
well-known fact that sometimes, under certain circumstances, there
arise within us unaccountable presentiments and forebodings, which
seem to anticipate the actual future.

Windham then stooped down, and thus tenderly and reverently raised up
the figure of the woman. The sun was still rising and gleaming over
the waters, and gleaming thus, it threw its full rays into the face
of the one whom he held supported in his arms, whose head was thrown
back as it lay on his breast, and was upturned so that he could see
it plainly.

And never, in all his dreams, had any face appeared before him which
bore so rare and radiant a beauty as this one of the mysterious
stranger whom he had rescued. The complexion was of a rich olive, and
still kept its hue where another would have been changed to the
pallor of death; the closed eyes were fringed with long heavy lashes;
the eyebrows were thin, and loftily arched; the hair was full of
waves and undulations, black as night, gleaming with its jetty gloss
in the sun's rays, and in its disorder falling in rich luxuriant
masses over the arms and the shoulder of him who supported her. The
features were exquisitely beautiful; her nose a slight departure from
the Grecian; her lips small and exquisitely shapen; her chin rounded
faultlessly. The face was thinner than it might have been, like the
face of youth and beauty in the midst of sorrow; but the thinness was
not emaciation; it had but refined and spiritualized those matchless
outlines, giving to them not the voluptuous beauty of the Greek
ideal, b