The stars slid a little; the waters hissed; the wind screamed. Time was an interminable agony, welding impossible moment to impossible moment that crawled, crawled, crawled. Gloria slipped in again, and then his father, and then Colonel Kinney, losing his wire, and Ronny dived again and again. He had lost track of the number of times. He was not even sure which one it was he hauled heavily to the surface, clinging to him and coughing weakly. Now his right leg was getting cramped. The pain shot up the stiffened muscle, needlelike and searing. Suppose it caught him down there next, when he most needed all the strength he had? He was ashamed to rouse Bill, but he had to, and he heard his own voice, husky and humble, as Bill’s had been. Bill roused instantly and took charge. Ronny hooked his arm over the cockpit edge, and the doze that moved upon him was delightful. Yet it seemed only a moment when Bill was calling him again, exhausted, and the stars were altered and it was hours later. As Ronny moved out to be among the others, and Bill hung gasping, he counted them carefully, to make sure they were all there. His hands lingered on a shoulder, and he saw that it was his father. After a moment his father’s voice came to him wearily. “Still--hanging--on,” he said. “Don’t go doing--too much now. We--depend on--you and Bill--a lot.” The night went like that, passing so slowly, with such a minute succession of incidents, of wretchedness, that it seemed impossible that it could ever end or change above a half-drowned world. So that when Ronny, floundering on a wave top, with one arm holding up Gloria, happened to see in the east a streak of pale colour, he stared at it for a long time with puzzled, bloodshot eyes, wondering dully what it could be. The glow widened, the sky and sea around it turned pale gray. A streak of burning gold swelled into that. And Ronny cried out suddenly, in his surprise, “Look; it’s morning!” The tender light fell on faces sodden and strained almost beyond recognition. But even as the light grew white and radiant over the crested wave tops and the strange emerald of the waters, animation came into the faces and they were once more his father and Gloria and Mrs. Kinney and the colonel and Bill. As if light were the supreme necessity, the supreme miracle, they sought it. It was hope; it was food; it was safety; it was life. A faint burst of animation, exclamation, broken words, feeble, husky laughter passed among them like a renewed pledge. They were once more capable of watching the sea to the west, where any moment now a boat might come. Yet no boat came. The flash of spray was only the edge of a higher wave. The drone was only the wind in the wires. Bill, lifting himself up with greater difficulty now, peered out above them over an empty sea.