"For the sharks to eat," he whispered to the inanimate form; "they want to throw you into the sea for the sharks to eat, my darling. But I'll tear their hearts out before they part us." When the silver crescent looked down again upon the despairing group, Joshua tried once more to comfort the man, and said, with a heavy heart, that perhaps at the last moment a ship might pick them up. But though he uttered the words, he did not believe in them. "And if it does," muttered Mr. Pigeon hoarsely, "what do I care now? You don't know what it is to lose the woman you love." He staggered to his feet with the beloved form in his arm. "You want to take her from me; that is why you speak the lying words. But nothing shall part us--nothing." Her face was lying upon his shoulder, and her fair hair was hanging loosely down over his breast. He took some of the hair in his mouth; and as Joshua saw him standing thus in the moon's light, he thought he had never seen a picture so utterly despairing. Thus the man stood, motionless, for a time, until the captain's lady crept to his side, and tried to console him. Poor thing! she was terribly weak, and the words came from her lips slowly and wearily. He gazed at her vacantly while she spoke, then turned his eyes to his dead wife. "Emma," he said, "don't fear; nothing that they say shall make me give you up. We will go together--we will go together." He cast one last look at the peaceful heavens, and whispering, "Lord, receive us!" clasped his wife more closely to him, and jumped into the sea. Two or three heads turned at the plash; but no other notice was taken of the event. They were all too weak and despairing. The captain's wife gasped, with heart-broken sobs,-- "Poor dears! poor dears! Their troubles are over; they are happier than we are." "Yes, my lady," said Joshua; "but I would not end my life like that. We are in the hands of the Lord; our lives belong to Him." He stretched himself at full length upon the raft, and took Ellen's picture and the lock of hair from his breast, and kissed them again and again. They, and the Bible that Dan had given him, were his most precious possessions. When he looked up, Minnie and Little Emma were close to him. He took the child's hand; and they remained together during the long, long night. A dreadful announcement was made the next day. The water that was served out was the last--one tablespoonful each exhausted the store; all the provisions were used up also. It seemed, indeed, as if the best thing they could do would be to die at once by their own hands. The rules made by the council were no longer thought of. Something to eat, something to drink: these were the only laws now. When the next man died, the sailors looked longingly at the body. The Lascar had his knife open, and was about to use it, when Captain Liddle called to him to stop. "Why?" asked the Lascar, with a savage flourish of his knife.