But of that there was very little chance. All the afternoon the calm lasted, with light mists hanging in wreaths upon the horizon. But about the hour of sunset the smoke that had risen from the burning ship, and which had not drifted more than a couple of miles to the southward throughout the day, came sailing slowly towards the boat and passed high overhead, thinning its bulk as it travelled in an easterly direction. A light breeze heralded it; they hoisted the sail, put the boat’s head round, and stood east-south-east. The night fell, but the light breeze held steady. When they thought Mrs. Tennent was asleep, they raised the body of the General in their arms from the bottom of the boat. The night was lustrous with yellow stars, which diffused sufficient light to enable them to see the old man’s face. The eyes were closed, and, though the under-jaw was fallen, there yet lingered an expression both of firmness and sweetness about the mouth. The draught under the sail moved his white hairs. “Mates,” said Holdsworth in a whisper, “we pray that God has taken this noble gentleman’s soul to Himself, and that, though his body be dispersed in the sea, it will rise again at the Day of Judgment, in the shape we now behold it, to become a partaker of life everlasting, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The two sailors answered Amen! All three of them then tenderly handed the body, over the boat’s side, and let it gently slip into the water. The white hair glimmered for a brief moment on the dark surface, and then the body sank or was swallowed up in the gloom; and the boat rippled onwards, cutting the star flakes in the sea with her stem, and leaving them glittering in silver fragments in her wake. CHAPTER X. THE FOURTH DAY. A fourth day broke, and found the boat almost becalmed again. The intense tedium of their captivity cannot be expressed by words. The eternal iteration of the water-line became a torment and a pang, and forced them to look into the boat or upon one another for relief of the strained and weary eye. Their limbs were cramped for want of space to stretch themselves. Holdsworth’s cheeks were sunk, and the hollows of his eyes dark; and a black beard and moustache, sprouting upon his chin and lip, gave him a gaunt and grizly look. The men sat with rounded backs and hopeless eyes, fixed downwards, and sinewy hands clasped upon their knees. But the effect of the sufferings, bodily and mental, they were enduring, was most visible in the widow, whose face was scarcely recognisable for the wasted, aged, pallid, and heart-broken aspect that it presented. When the little boy awoke he began to cry and complain of pains in his limbs and back. His mother seemed too weak to support or even soothe him with speech. Holdsworth took him upon his knee and talked to him cheerfully, that he might inspirit the others as well as himself.