ion of British sailors;
Desborough his, with the courage of the hero that he was, his fiercest
pang being for the white-faced girl who suffered in uncomplaining
silence. The colonel exhibited the stoical indifference of a seasoned
old soldier, as to his own personal condition, all his thoughts being
centred upon his daughter, who passed through the dreadful experience
with the calm resignation of a woman who had nothing left to live for,
and, strange to say, seemed to feel it less acutely than the rest; even
black Chloe, who had impartially shared with her mistress in all the
favors accorded to her, being in a state of utter exhaustion, amounting
to collapse.

When the pangs of hunger and thirst got hold of them, they refused--and
were indeed entirely unable--to work longer with the oars, so that,
unless the wind was fair and the sail was set, they simply drifted on.

One by one the sailors died. Waking from a troubled sleep of short
duration, Katharine one day found Chloe's dead hand around her feet,
her cold lips pressed upon them. Some of the men grew mad before they
died, and raved and babbled of green fields and running brooks until
the end came, and still the little boat drifted on. Few and short were
the prayers the living said as, day by day they cast the dead into the
sea. Desborough, the resolute, with undying strength kept steadily at
the helm. Once only did he speak to Katharine in words of love. As
their situation grew more and more hopeless, and even his resolute
optimism began to fail him, he bent down and whispered in her ear,--

"I would not trouble you now, Katharine, but before we die I must tell
you once again that I love you. Will you believe it?"

"I will believe it," she answered dully, giving him her hand. Oh, he
thought in agony, as he bent over it and kissed it, how thin and white
and feeble it was I One morning, after hope was dead, he was listlessly
scanning the line of the horizon as the rising sun threw it into
relief, more from habit than expectancy, when his heart almost stopped
its feeble beating, for land was there before him if his strained eyes
did not deceive him. Doubting the evidence of his weakened senses, and
fearing the delusions of a disordered imagination, he refrained from
communicating his impressions to any of the others until the light of
day determined the accuracy of his vision. Then he whispered the news
to Katharine, the apathetic woman told it to the sin