Rhoda's memory held after no record of what her body did then, till she had Christian's head on her knee. Had she mastered the great peril of the sail? had she fastened the rudder for drifting, and baled? she whose knowledge and strength were so scanty? Her hands assured her of what her mind could not: they were chafed by their frantic hurry over cordage. She felt that Christian lived; yet nothing could she do for him, but hold him in her arms, giving her body for a pillow, till so they should presently go down together, and both be safely dead. The buoy-bells jangled to windward, to leeward. Then spoke the blessed voices of the three Saints, and a light showed, a single murky star in a great cave of blackness, that leaned across the zenith to close round the pallid west. Ah, not here, not here in the evil place! She had rather they drown in the open. The weak, desolate girl was yet clinging desperately to the barest chance of life. She laid her burden down; with awkward, aching hands she ventured to get out a corner of sail; and she tried to steer, but it was only by mercy of a flaw of wind that she held off and went blindly reeling away from the fatal surf. As night came on fully the light and the voice of the House Monitory passed away, and the buoy-bells, and the roar of breakers, and the heavy black of the coast. Past the Land's End in the free currents of open sea, she let the boat drive. Crouching down again, she took up the dear weight to give what shelter she could, and to gain for herself some, for great blasts drove hard, and furious gusts of rain came scourging. Through the great loneliness of the dark they went, helpless, driving on to the heart of the night, the strength of the waves still mounting, and the fierceness of the wind; the long gathering storm, still half restrained, to outleap in full hurricane about the time of midnight. CHAPTER IX All night Lois and Giles were praying in anguish of grief for their children of adoption, even when hope was beaten out by the heavy-handed storm. For three days and nights the seas were sailless, though the hulks of two wrecks were spied drifting; and after, still they ran so high, that a fifth day dawned before a lugger beat in aside her course on a kindly errand. Then up the street leapt news to the desolate pair: how Rhoda and Christian lived; how their boat had been run down in the night, and themselves snatched gallantly from death; how they had been put ashore at the first port a mastless ship could win, and there received by the pity of strangers; and how all the while Christian lay raving and dying, and by now must be dead.