The two vessels were now near enough for a high-pitched conversation without the assistance of trumpets, and Mary Phillips assisted Bertha to the side of the steamer, where I could distinctly see her. I shouted as hearty a greeting as ever was sent across the water, bidding her to keep up a good heart, for help of some kind must surely come to us. She tried to answer me, but her voice was not strong enough. Then she shook her head, by which I understood that she did not agree with me in my hopeful predictions. I called back to her that in all this drifting about the two vessels must certainly come together, and then, with the assistance of the steamer's boat, we could certainly devise some way of getting out of this annoying plight. She smiled, apparently at the mildness of this expression, and again shook her head. She now seemed tired, for her position by the rail was not an easy one to maintain, and her maid assisted her to her couch on the deck. Then stood, up Mary Phillips, speaking loud and promptly:-- "She has a message for you," she said, "which she wanted to give to you herself, but she cannot do it. She thinks--but I tell her it is of no use thinking that way--that we are bound to be lost. You may be saved because your ship seems in a better condition than ours, and she does not believe that the two vessels will ever come together; so she wants me to tell you that if you get home and she never does, that she wishes her share in the Forty-second Street house to go to her married sister, and to be used for the education of the children. She doesn't want it divided up in the ordinary way, because each one will get so little, and it will do no good. Do you think that will be a good will?" "Don't speak of wills!" I shouted; "there is no need of a will. She will get home in safety and attend to her own affairs." "I think so, too," cried Mary Phillips; "but I had to tell you what she said. And now she wants to know if you have any message to send to your parents, for we might blow off somewhere and be picked up, while this might not happen to you. But I don't believe in that sort of thing any more than in the other." I shouted back my disbelief in the necessity of any such messages, when Mary Phillips seized her trumpet and cried that she did not hear me. Alas! the breeze was still blowing, and the steamer was moving away to the northeast. Through my trumpet I repeated my words, and then Mary said something which I could not hear. The wind was against her. I shouted to her to speak louder, and she must have screamed with all her force, but I could only hear some words to the effect that we were bound to come together again, and she waved her handkerchief cheerily. Then the steamer moved farther and farther away, and speaking-trumpets were of no avail. I seized the glass, and watched _La Fidélité_, until she was nothing but a black spot upon the sea.