and rested his arms on a thwart, while he turned his gaze with a look of
intense anxiety on the countenance of a young girl who lay in the bottom
of the boat close beside him, asleep or dead.

"It looks like death," murmured the youth, as he bent over the pale
face, his expression betraying sudden alarm; "and it must--it must come
to this soon; yet I cannot bear the thought. O God, spare her!"

It seemed as if the prayer were answered at once, for a fluttering sigh
escaped from the girl's bloodless lips, but she did not awake.

"Ah! sleep on, dear sister," said the youth, "it is all the comfort that
is left to you now. Oh for food! How often I have wasted it; thought
lightly of it; grumbled because it was not quite to my taste! What
would I not give for a little of it now--a very little!"

He turned his head away from the sleeping girl, and a wolfish glare
seemed to shoot from his eyes as they rested on something which lay in
the stern of the boat.

There were other human beings in that boat besides the youth and his
sister--some still living, some dead, for they had been many days on
short allowance, and the last four days in a state of absolute
starvation--all, save Pauline Rigonda and her little brother Otto, whose
fair curly head rested on his sister's arm.

During the last two nights, when all was still, and the starving sailors
were slumbering, or attempting to slumber, Dominick Rigonda--the youth
whom we have just introduced to the reader--had placed a small quantity
of broken biscuit in the hands of his sister and little brother, with a
stern though whispered command to eat it secretly and in silence.

Obediently they ate, or rather devoured, their small portion, wondering
where their brother had found it. Perchance they might have relished it
less if they had known that Dominick had saved it off his own too scant
allowance, when he saw that the little store in the boat was drawing to
an end--saved it in the hope of being able to prolong the lives of
Pauline and Otto.

This reserve, however, had been also exhausted, and it seemed as if the
last ray of hope had vanished from Dominick's breast, on the calm
morning on which our tale opens.

As we have said, the youth glared at something lying in the stern of the
boat. It was a tarpaulin, which covered a human form. Dominick knew
that it was a dead body--that of the cabin-boy, who had died during the
night with his head resting on Dominick's arm. T