To remove his cardigan jacket, which was under his oil-coat, Martin had to expose himself to the biting no’wester, and so cold and searching was it that he took many minutes to button his oil-jacket again. To overcome the numbness--“Or soon I wouldn’t be able to hold an oar at all,” he muttered--he beat his hands against the gunnels, noticing the while that he not only knocked off the last little films of frozen snow-crust, but also, though this rather curiously than sympathetically, that the ends of his fingers bled under the impact of the blows. “Man, but ’tis cold, when it comes to that!” and bent over the boy to fix the jacket more securely around his neck. “Forty-eight hours now without food or drink--’tis hard on you, lad--hard on you.” Back to his rowing, and no cessation till he heard the lad muttering in his sleep. “What’s it now?” said Martin, and bent toward him. “-- But to be floating around in the water or lying somewhere on bottom for the fish to eat up--” murmured the sleeping boy. “Lad, lad, but you’re right--’tis hard.” “-- If it was no more than a Christian burial--” “Christian burial, lad? Make your mind easy, but if I live, and you die, ’tis Christian burial you’ll get, boy. But ’tis both of us together’ll go, I’m thinkin’ now.” He shook the lad. “Wake--wake now, Eddie-boy--wake, boy, wake, and try and row again a bit. ’Tis cruel I am--aye, the hard heart of me--aye, boy. But now you must row, and maybe you’ll warm up a while yet. Lay there, and in two hours more ’tis stiff as the oar itself you’ll be.” And so the boy crept to his seat and resumed rowing, though his oars no more than slid over the surface of the sea. The lad thought he was helping--he saw the oars pass from forward to aft and back again--but it was only the dory slipping away under the ceaseless drive of Martin’s irresistible strength. Throughout all that cold winter’s day they rowed. And night came, and once more the boy sought the stern and lay there; and as he lay, Martin took off his oil-jacket and buttoned it about the lad’s body. “There, now, a cardigan jacket and two oilskins. You ought to keep warm now. And now, Martin Carr”--he was back to his seat again--“’tis harder than ever you’ll have to row or yourself freeze to an icicle.” All through that long night Martin called to the lad. Until well into the night, as he considered it, he could catch the responses. But gradually Eddie’s voice became duller, and toward morning Martin got no answer at all. “Asleep, the poor boy!” muttered Martin, himself by then not too wide awake.