We both stood up hand in hand, for the sway of the raft made a danger of it as a platform, and I listened with strained hearing. It might have been a steamer, but there was no blotch of darkness upon the obscurity the sea-line round to denote her, nor any gleam of lantern. Yet for nearly a quarter of an hour did we listen, in a torment of attention, and then resumed our seats side by side. The dawn broke at last, dispelling, as it seemed to my weary despairing imagination, a long month of perpetual night. The cold gray was slow and stealthy, and was a tedious time in brightening into the silver and rose of sunrise. My first act was to sweep the sea for a ship, and I then went to the cot and looked at the face upon the pillows in it. If I had never seen death before, I might have known it now. I turned to the girl. 'Helga,' said I gently, 'you can guess what my duty is--for your sake, and for mine, and for his too.' I looked earnestly at her as I spoke: she was deadly pale, haggard, her eyes red and inflamed with weeping, and her expression one of exquisite touching sorrow and mourning. But the sweetness of her young countenance was dominant even in that supreme time, and, blending with the visible signs of misery in her looks, raised the mere prettiness of her features into a sad beauty that impressed me as a spiritual rather than as a physical revelation. 'Yes, I know what must be done,' she answered. 'Let me kiss him first.' She approached the cot, knelt by it, and put her lips to her father's: then raising her clasped hands above her head, and looking upwards, she cried out: '_Jeg er faderlös! Gud hjelpe mig!_' I stood apart waiting, scarcely able to draw my breath for the pity and sorrow that tightened my throat. It is impossible to imagine the plaintive wailing note her voice had as she uttered those Danish words: '_I am fatherless! God help me!_' She then hid her face in her hands, and remained kneeling and praying. After a few minutes she arose, kissed again the white face, and seated herself with her back upon the cot. No one could have named to me a more painful, a more distasteful piece of work than the having to handle the body of this poor Danish captain, and launch him into that fathomless grave upon whose surface we lay. First I had to remove the ropes which formed our little bulwark, that I might slide the cot overboard; then with some ends of line I laced the figure in the cot, that it should not float away out of it when launched. The work kept me close to the body, and, thin and white as he was, yet he looked so lifelike, wore an expression so remonstrant, that my horror was sensibly tinctured with a feeling of guilt, as though instead of burying him I was about to drown him.