“So simple, Mr. Monk, that I do not understand it in the least. You must have known the risks, for you asked no one to share them—the risks that are so near and real;” and, shivering visibly, she looked at the grey combers seething past them, and the wind-torn horizon beyond. “Yet, you—you who have ties, faced all this on the chance of saving a stranger.” “Please, please,” broke in Morris. “At any rate, you see, it was a happy inspiration.” “Yes, for me, perhaps—but for you! Oh, if it should end in your being taken away from the world before your time, from the world and the lady who—what then?” Morris winced; then he said: “God’s will be done. But although we may be in danger, we are not dead yet; not by a long way.” “She would hate me whose evil fortune it was to draw you to death, and in life or out of it I should never forgive myself—never! never!” and she covered her eyes with her cold, wet hand and sighed. “Why should you grieve over what you cannot help?” asked Morris gently. “I cannot quite explain to you,” she answered; “but the thought of it seems so sad.” CHAPTER X. DAWN AND THE LAND A day, a whole day, spent upon that sullen, sunless waste of water, with the great waves bearing them onwards in one eternal, monotonous procession, till at length they grew dizzy with looking at them, and the ceaseless gale piping in their ears. Long ago they had lost sight of land; even the tall church towers built by our ancestors as beacons on this stormy coast had vanished utterly. Twice they sighted ships scudding along under their few rags of canvas, and once a steamer passed, the smoke from her funnels blowing out like long black pennons. But all of these were too far off, or too much engaged with their own affairs to see the little craft tossing hither and thither like a used-up herring basket upon the endless area of ocean. Fortunately, from his youth Morris had been accustomed to the management of boats in all sorts of weather, the occupation of sailing alone upon the waters being one well suited to his solitary and reflective disposition. Thus it came about that they survived, when others, less skilful, might have drowned. Sometimes they ran before the seas; sometimes they got up a few square feet of sail, and, taking advantage of a veer in the wind, tried to tack, and once, when it blew its hardest, fearing lest they should be pooped, for over an hour they contrived to keep head on to the waves.