It was a longer pull to the yacht than they had counted upon, a heavy
tax on their powers of endurance. Jim came up to find Agatha floating
on her back and put his hand under her shoulders, steadying her easily.
"Now you can really rest," he said.
"I've looked toward the horizon so long, I thought I'd look up, way up,
for a change," she said cheerfully. "That's where the skylarks go,
when they want to sing--straight up into heaven!"
"Doesn't it make you want to sing?"
She showed no surprise at the question.
"Yes, it does, almost. But just as I thought of the skylarks, I
remembered something else; something that kept haunting me in the
darkness all night--
"'Master in song, good-by, good-by,
Down to the dim sea-line--'
I thought something or somebody was surely lost down in 'the dim
sea-line' last night."
"Who can tell? But I had a better thought than yours: Ulysses, like
us, swimming over the 'wine-dark sea'! Do you remember it? 'Then two
days and two nights on the resistless waves he drifted; many a time his
heart faced death.'"
"That's not a bit better thought than mine; but I like it. And I know
what follows, too. 'But when the fair-haired dawn brought the third
day, then the wind ceased; there came a breathless calm; and close at
hand he spied the coast, as he cast a keen glance forward, upborne on a
great wave.' That's it, isn't it?"
"I don't know, but I hope it is. 'The wine-dark sea' and the
'rosy-fingered dawn' are all I remember; though I'm glad you know what
comes next. It's a good omen. But look at the yacht; she's acting
strange!"
As the girl turned to her stroke, their attention was caught and held
by the convulsions of the _Jeanne D'Arc_. There was a grim fascination
in the sight.
It was obvious that she was sinking. While they had been resting, her
hull had sunk toward the water-line, her graceful bulk and delicate
masts showing strange against ocean and sky. Now she suddenly tipped
down at her stern; her bow was thrown up out of the water for an
instant, only to be drawn down again, slowly but irresistibly, as if
she were pulled by a giant's unseen hand. With a sudden last lurch she
disappeared entirely, and only widening circles fleetingly marked the
place of her going.
The two in the water watched with fascinated eyes, filled with awe.
When it was all over Agatha turned to her companion with a long-drawn
breath. Jim looked as one looks whose last hope has failed.
"I could never have let you go aboard, anyway!" He loved her anew for
that speech, but knew not how to meet her eyes.
"Well, Ulysses lost his raft, too!" he managed to say.
"He saw the sunrise, too, just as we have seen it; and he saw a distant
island, 'that seemed a shield laid on the misty sea.' Let's look hard
now, each time the wave lifts us. Perhaps we also shall see an island."
"We must swim harder; you are chilled through."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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