f the
ship. Water! Sick and wounded drew themselves up to the portholes and
peered out from their cells for the first time.

"Where?... Where?" ran the wild, eager cry of the scurrying throng, and
there was disappointment--bitter disappointment in their voices. They
had been tricked. There was no land in sight! The glasses of the ship's
officers, clustered far forward, were directed toward some point off the
starboard bow, but if there was land over there it was not visible to
the naked eye. A junior engineer saluted Captain Trigger and left the
group.

"There is land ahead,--a long way off," he announced as he passed
through the throng in the saloon deck.

Up above the clamour of questions shouted from all sides as the crazed
people flocked behind the messenger of hope, rose the voice of Morris
Shine.

"Land ahoy! Ahoy-yoy-yoy!" he yelled over and over again, his chin
raised like that of a dog baying at the moon.

Every person on deck was either carrying a life-belt or was already
encased in one. Grim orders of the night just past. Here and there were
to be seen men who clutched tightly the handles of suitcases and kit
bags! Evidently they were expecting to step ashore at once. In any case,
they belonged to the class of people who never fail to crowd their
way down the gang-plank ahead of every one else. The fashionable ocean
liners always have quite a number of these on board, invariably in the
first cabin.

Percival ranged the decks in quest of Ruth Clinton. She was well aft on
the boat deck, where the rail was not so crowded as it was forward.
Her arm was about the drooping, pathetic figure of her aunt. They were
staring intently out over the water,--the girl's figure erect, vibrant,
alive with the spirit of youth, her companion's sagging under the doubt
and scepticism of age. He hesitated a moment before accosting them.
Nicklestick, the Jew, was excitedly retailing the news to them. He went
so far as to declare that he could see land quite clearly,--and so could
they if they would only look exactly where he was pointing. He claimed
to have been one of the very first men on board to see the land.

Ruth was hatless. Her braided brown hair had been coiled so hastily, so
thoughtlessly that stray strands fell loose about her neck and ears to
be blown gaily by the breeze across her cheek. Her blouse was open at
the neck, her blue serge jacket flared in the wind. Every vestige of the
warm, soft colour had left he