The girl had been drugged with morphia, but in what dose, and in what doses the men, it is impossible to conjecture. The madman reading the book of directions may have understood it, but insanity had rendered memory useless when it came to his mixing the poison with the liquor and the wine. But she was not dead; he would have found that out if he had bared her breast and put his ear to the white softness. But would she die in that sleep which was as death? for I believe it is the heart's action that fails in such cases, and at any moment her soul might return to God. But he! poor unhappy wretch, if he understood what his mad but most moving love for his child had impelled him to do, his perception would not be as ours. His heart burned with desire that she should awake and tell him in which direction he should steer, for already the ship was a toy astern, three spires of ice-like radiance dipping to the eye on the brows of the blue swell as the boat rose and sank, jewelling the water with two foam-threaded lines of little yeasty bubbles. Would she ever awaken? How long would she continue in sleep? To some a dose of morphia professionally prescribed will yield a long night's rest not wholly unrefreshing, though the drug is obnoxious to the brain, which in time it murders. Therefore she might sleep into the early hours of the night. But these were not _his_ speculations. His mind was intent on one object, and he held the boat straight before the wind, waiting for her to look at him and rise, and point to the spot where his boy was. It passed into about an hour before sunset. From time to time the captain had laid his hand gently upon the girl's brow, believing she would open her eyes and speak to him. He was like a child whose grave or tragic act was beyond his mind's capacity to understand. He was painfully haggard, and sweat drops were on his forehead and cheeks, but the dreadful fire was always in his eyes. And once he stared fixedly over the port bow of the boat as though his poor brain had shaped the vision of his child: he stared as though he beheld the phantom, and when it vanished out of the perfidious cell which had created it he sighed and frowned. He took no heed of sensation; thirst and hunger may have been his, but he never left the helm to drink or eat. At the hour I have named the westering sun was beginning to empurple the east, and he was steering toward the point where the evening star would rise. More than half the moon was hanging in a broken shape of dim pearl over the boat's bows. All at once the captain's ceaseless stare at the ocean brought his eyes to an object almost directly ahead. He was a sailor, and his afflicted reason could not deceive him. Right ahead and within half an hour's sail--so low seated was the gunwale of that boat--lay a small vessel, partly dismasted and deep sunk. She was painted black. Her lower masts were white, and both foresail and mainsail were hanging, but the trysail was stowed.