She would not answer me; but, as though to give my words their meaning, we had watched but a little while longer on the rock when suddenly out of the East the grey light winged over to us, and, spreading its wonder-rays upon the seas, it rolled the black veil back and showed us height and valley, sea and land, the white-capped breakers and the dim heaven beyond them. Many a dawn have I watched and waited for on the heart of the desolate sea, but never one which carried to me such a message as then it spake, the joy of action and release, the tight of life and hope, the clarion call, uplifting, awakening! For I knew that in day our salvation lay, and that the terrible night was forever passed; and every faculty being quickened, the mind alert, the eyes no longer veiled, I stretched out my arms to the sun and said, "Thank God!" * * * It was day, and the fresh sea answered its appeal. Coming quickly as day will in the great Pacific, we had scarce seen that great rim of the East lift itself above the sparkling water when all the scene was opened to us, the picture of ships and water and wave-washed reef made clear as in some scene of stageland. As with one tongue, realizing a mighty truth, we cried, "The ship is gone; the ship has sailed!" It was true, all true. Where at sundown there had been a yacht anchored in the offing, now at daybreak no yacht was to be seen. Darkness, which had been the ally of Czerny's men, had helped the man himself to flee from them to an unknown haven where their vengeance should not reach him. By night had he fled, and by day would he mock his creatures. Drifting there in the open boats, the rising seas beginning to wash in upon them, hunger and thirst their portion, the rebels were at no pains to hide their secret from us. We knew that they had been called back by these overwhelming tidings of the master-trick, and we asked what heart the rogues would have now to sell their lives for the man who betrayed them? Would they not look to us for the satisfaction the chief rogue denied to them? We, as they, were left helpless in that woful place. Before us, as before them, lay the peril of hunger and of thirst, the death-sleep or the greater mercy. And who should ask them to accept it without a last supreme attempt, a final assault, which should mend all or end all? Driven to the last point, to the last point would they go to grasp that foothold of the seas and to drive us from the rock whereon life might yet be had. "Lads," I said, "the story is there as the man has written it. We have no quarrel with yon poor devils nor they with us; but they will find one. We cannot help them; they cannot help us. We'll wait for the end--just wait for it."