“Six hours at least,” he soliloquized. “Heavens, I must have been pounded hard to lie unconscious for that long! If the old tub has floated six hours she may float indefinitely. But----” He stared curiously around him. As far as his eye could reach stretched the yellow gulf-weed, blanketing the blue of the sea. So thick was it that it held the Queen comparatively stationary, despite the strong breeze that pressed against her. Howard uttered a cry of dismay. “The Sargasso Sea,” he groaned. “We’re inside it--far inside it. Great Scott!” His brain reeled again. “Where the deuce is Jackson?” he muttered irritably. “And where’s that woman?” Pat to the moment, Jackson thrust his head out of the doorway of the social hall. His dark face was pallid now, and he glared around him wildly. When he saw Howard standing, his expression brightened. “So you’re alive,” he rumbled, surlily. “It takes a devil of a lot to kill some people.” Howard stared at the man curiously. It was hardly the way he had expected to be greeted. “Yes,” he answered, slowly, “it takes a good deal--sometimes. It didn’t take much for those poor devils in that boat you wanted to go in. Where’s the girl?” Jackson jerked his hand over his right shoulder. “She’s in there,” he responded. Then he hesitated for an instant. “It was a brave thing you did,” he finished, grudgingly. Howard shrugged his shoulders. “Merely a choice of deaths,” he answered. “I expected the ship to sink any minute, and, personally, I preferred to die fighting. How is she?” “She’s breathing, but that’s all. She hasn’t moved since I got her aboard.” “No wonder. She really hasn’t any right to be alive after what she went through. Have you done anything for her?” “I didn’t know what to do. I took her into the social hall and laid her on the sofa and got some whiskey for her, but I couldn’t get her to take it, and she looked so horrible and----” He paused, evidently shaken. Howard stretched up his hand. “I must see her,” he declared. “I’m pretty shaky still, but if you’ll give me a lift I’ll try to scramble up beside you and then we’ll see what we can do.” He took the hand that Jackson offered. “Now brace yourself,” he warned. “All set?” Jackson nodded, and Howard, after an experimental tug or two, put forth all his strength and drew himself up to the other’s side. “That’s good,” he remarked. “I guess we’re both worth a dozen dead men yet. By the way, how did you get the girl up here?” Jackson showed more animation than he had yet done. “The deck wasn’t so steep when I moved her,” he explained. “It tilted worse just as I got her inside. I thought at first we were going down, but we didn’t.” Howard stepped inside the social hall--which had never before so belied its name--and looked around him. After the bright light of the deck, the room seemed dark, and for a moment he could see nothing. Then he caught a glimpse of something lying on the big athwartship sofa, and scrambled over to it.