From corners where they had been hiding came the balance of the ship’s company and when they saw Bohar’s boat and the seemingly relative safety of the crew they clamored for escape by the other boats. With the idea once implanted in their minds there followed a mad panic as the half-brutes fought for places in the remaining boats. “Come!” cried Stellara. “We must hurry or they will go without us.” She started to move toward the companionway, but Tanar restrained her. “Look at them,” he said. “We are safer at the mercy of the sea and the storm.” Stellara shrank back close to him. She saw men knifing one another—those behind knifing those ahead. Men dragging others from the boats and killing them on deck or being killed. She saw The Cid pistol a seaman in the back and leap to his place in the first boat to be lowered. She saw men leaping from the rail in a mad effort to reach this boat and falling into the sea, or being thrown in if they succeeded in boarding the tossing shell. She saw the other boats being lowered and men crushed between them and the ship’s side—she saw the depths to which fear can plunge the braggart and the bully as the last of the ship’s company, failing to win places in the last boat, deliberately leaped into the sea and were drowned. Standing there upon the high poop of the rolling derelict, Tanar and Stellara watched the frantic efforts of the oarsmen in the overcrowded small boats. They saw one boat foul another and both founder. They watched the drowning men battling for survival. They heard their hoarse oaths and their screams above the roaring of the sea and the shriek of the wind as the storm returned as though fearing that some might escape its fury. “We are alone,” said Stellara. “They have all gone.” “Let them go,” replied Tanar. “I would not exchange places with them.” “But there can be no hope for us,” said the girl. “There is no more for them,” replied the Sarian, “and at least we are not crowded into a small boat filled with cutthroats.” “You are more afraid of the men than you are of the sea,” she said. “For you, yes,” he replied. “Why should you fear for me?” she demanded. “Am I not also your enemy?” He turned his eyes quickly upon her and they were filled with surprise. “That is so,” he said; “but, somehow, I had forgotten it—you do not seem like an enemy, as the others do. You do not seem like one of them, even.” Clinging to the rail and supporting the girl upon the lurching deck, Tanar’s lips were close to Stellara’s ear as he sought to make himself heard above the storm. He sensed the faint aroma of a delicate sachet that was ever after to be a part of his memory of Stellara.