Presently the reassuring warmth of the sun had changed to the agonizing glare of yesterday. Their faces were a raw crimson against which the wave edges were knife cuts. Their salt-crusted lips were swollen and cracked. Their eyes were bloodshot and inflamed. Ronny and Bill managed to find rags enough about them to make masks to tie over the faces of the four. Ronny and Bill dared not mask themselves. They had to be on the alert now, both of them. For now that the flash of hope was over and the sun glared nearer and nearer to noon, the others slipped down more easily into the blue depths. It was easier to find them there now, that was all. It must have been afternoon when Colonel Kinney, slipping down almost without a splash, eluded Ronny’s grasp. Beneath the surface the big body was only a whirling shadow which Ronny caught lightly once and lost. When Ronny’s lungs seemed bursting he shot to the surface empty-handed, with despairing eyes for Bill’s anxious look. One full breath and he was down again, fighting down amidst the strong heave and swirl of the waters, and Bill was with him. Twice they clutched each other fiercely. There was no other shape. Gasping dreadfully the two hung together on the fuselage, staring into each other’s eyes. There was nothing to be said. Ronny was thankful for the mask over Mrs. Kinney’s eyes. She need not know yet. She was like a dead thing, hanging there, half held by the wire about her, with one hand locked about a strut. She clung as if by no volition of her own, but only the gripping tenacity of the life within her, straining to go on. The sun beat down upon them. The wind screamed steadily in the wires. The eternal water roared and hissed. No one had said anything for hours and hours. It was late afternoon. “Ron,” whispered his father feebly through his mask, “where’s the colonel?” “Gone,” said Ronny after a moment. “I--lost him.” His father tore off his mask suddenly. Beneath it the contorted swollen features were almost unrecognizable. “He’s lucky,” his father rasped. “Why not? Why not?” “Hush, Dad,” Ronny said patiently, “they’ll hear you. There’ll be a boat before long. There must be.” Andrew Burgess said nothing more. Ronny stared at the haggard, bitter face where the stiff gray hairs bristled about the chin. It smote through his numbed brain suddenly that his father--his splendid father--was an old, old man. The sunset flared hideously down upon them. Another night came slowly from the west. And Gloria, tearing off her mask, leaned back abruptly in the rag that held her, and tore free. Her lips strained back from her gaunt face in a queer tense smile and she threw both hands over her head and went down suddenly, before Ronny could guess what she had intended. And below there was only the swirl and the silvery bubbles of his own and Bill’s frantic search.