I could not think of her but as slowly dying to the streaming away of her precious blood. What to do I knew not; and in addition to this dreadful state of despair was the obligation upon me to watch the boat and shrewdly and seriously attend to my course by the warning surf-thunder floating back against the wind from the echoing strand. From time to time I would address Imogene, always with a terror in me of winning no reply, of touching her and finding her dead. Once she answered that she believed the bleeding in her shoulder had stopped; the icy-coldness was gone, and there was a small smarting there as if she had been burnt, but nothing that she could not easily endure. But I knew by the tone of her voice that she spoke only to give me comfort; either that she was suffering above the power of her love for me to conceal in her faltering whispers or that her strength was unequal to the labour of utterance. Yet, as I have said, what could I do? I was no chirurgeon; and I wonder that my heart did not break to the bending of my scorching eyes upon my love lying wounded and bleeding at my feet. An hour passed; the fog still compassed us, but the white splendour of the moon was upon it. Methought that I heard Imogene whisper; I dropped on my knee, and she asked for water. I let go the steering oar, that jammed in the grummet and that could not therefore go adrift, and with great trouble found the little cup that I had hidden in one of the bags, and poured some water out of the pitcher into it. She moaned in pain when I put my arm under her head to raise it; but she drank greedily, nevertheless, and thanked me in a whisper when I tenderly let sink her head on to the jacket.