“For the rest, Miss Fairfax, there is some reason in what this man says. The catastrophe which has brought death to so many, and suffering, both past and future, to you, has saved me. I am safe from the electric chair. Anywhere else in the wide world I would have to shrink from every casual glance; would have to lie in answer to every wanton question. But no extradition runs to the heart of the Sargasso Sea. So it might seem natural that I should wish to stay here. In so far, our excitable friend is right. But I give you my word of honor, not as a jailbird, but as the gentleman I once was, that I am even more anxious to get out of here than yourself. I have still a task to do in the world; my view is not entirely bounded by the electric chair. If any faintest chance offers for us to escape, be sure that I will seize it. But I am helpless until we reach the central wrecks and see what aid they have to offer. Then I will do what a man may.” “I do not promise to go on to New York with Jackson, but I do promise to get you and him safely out of this place, if it is within my power to do so--and I believe it will be. Say that you believe me.” It was impossible not to believe this clear-eyed, straight-spoken gentleman, convicted murderer though he were. Dorothy held out her hand. “I believe you,” she said, “and I trust you.” Howard looked at the hand doubtfully. “That is not nominated in the bond,” he suggested. “Then we’ll put it in,” returned the girl. “As for what you have done in the past--I have forgotten it. We will all forget it--till then.” “So be it--till then!” The hands of the two met. But Jackson, standing aside, grunted scornfully. “I’ll not forget it,” he growled. “Not for a single minute; not till I get you to New York. I’ve known your smooth-spoken sort before.” VI TWO weeks passed without change in the situation, except that their end saw the Queen still deeper in the tangle. The breeze from the west had continued, but day by day had grown fainter, until at last it barely cooled the faces of the weary passengers. Day by day, too, the weed and the wreckage in the tangle grew thicker. Here and there floated broken spars, fragments of shattered deck-houses, moss-grown planks, Jacob’s-ladders, and all the fugitive spoil of the sea. Broken boats, bottom upward; rafts with tumbled fragments of canvas screening perhaps some terrible burden; a red buoy wrenched from some coast harbor; a bottle with a little flag bobbing above it--these appeared, grew nearer, and dropped astern, sometimes just out of reach of the Queen.