The subject seemed very hopeless. “I saw the charts in McArliss’ cabin. No reefs were charted according to our passage. We may have been off our course. But I do not understand. The mate took our bearings yesterday noon. I do not know what he reported to the Captain----” “It may have been a sunken wreck that we struck,” said Fleury. Bellair had thought of that. He turned to Stackhouse, who might have had something to say, but the other stared at them balefully--at their faces, not meeting their eyes. Either he had not followed their words, or chose to take no part. “If we are in the course of any ships at all, it would be of one passing our route, from the Horn to the Islands,” Fleury added. “I doubt if it would do us any good to row. We must not tax our strength. If we are off our course, we cannot tell whether it is to the north or south, so nothing is positively to be gained. It’s a question of hands up. The other boat set out for somewhere at once. If they find ship they will tell the story----” It appeared a useless recounting of obvious things. Bellair had thought this out bit by bit several times without finding the least substance to tie to. Fleury’s addition merely accentuated the bleakness of their position. “Still,” the preacher added, “if there is nothing for us to do in the way of struggle--the rest is simplified. We may be thoroughly tested, but I feel a strange confidence of our ultimate delivery. I thought of it before we had parted from the _Jade_. It came to me again in the night. I believe it now. We do not belong to the deep--not all of us.” Bellair wondered at the strength which came from this. He placed his trust upon this man, as one having familiarity with a source which he personally did not draw from. The preacher’s words were designed to cheer the woman, but he could not let them pass as merely for that. Fleury had a conviction, or he would not have spoken so. The air grew cooler during the long closing of that first day. Bellair thought of his overcoat which lay in a roll under the narrow planking forward where the woman sat. The bundle of New York papers dropped out, as he drew the garment forth. He opened one of the papers laughingly.... The headlines were like voices from another world. The abyss between the real and the unreal yawned before his eyes now in the open boat. New York seemed to be fighting in prints for things so little and unavailing. So little ago, he, Bellair, had moved among them, as among things that counted. Now what was real was the woman’s courage and the substance of Fleury’s faith, and the hope that came from the immensity. The deep contrasts of life held Bellair.