All was done that could be done to preserve life. It remained to live it.... But poor Humphrey Lantern, whom the other two tried to comfort, would not be comforted. He sat and bit his nails, full of remorse and horror, then passed through stages of anger to a melancholy, and thence to a dull indifference, silence, and abstraction. They could not rouse him. Aderhold spoke in vain of the Low Countries and the wars, and of all the good that they owed him, and of how they might yet live to remember these days not unkindly. Lantern, huddled in the bottom of the boat, looked at them blankly. His abused body sank more quickly than did theirs.... He had a knife, and at last one night, when they had been drifting long days and nights, he struck it into his heart. The body, swaying against Aderhold, roused him from uneasy sleep. His exclamation waked Joan; she put out her hand and raised it wet with blood. A moon so great and shining lit the night that they could see well enough what had been done. Lantern was dead. They laid him straight in the bottom of the boat. Aderhold drew out and washed the knife, and then they sat beside the dead man until the moon paled in the vast rose-flush of dawn. Then, while sea and sky were so beauteous, they lifted the body; then, while they looked to the brightening east, let it leave their hands for the great deep. Wind and current bore the boat slowly onward and away. The two were now so weak that they lay still as after great and prolonged exertion. The day burned to its height, flamed to its close. There came a sunset of supernal beauty, and then the pitying, brief twilight and the glory of the southern night. The coolness gave a little strength. Aderhold set the cup to the mouth of the cask and poured for each a shallow draught of water. They should not have drunk till morning, for their store was nearly gone. But with one mind they took this, to give them voice, to free them for a little from gross pain. When it was done they turned each to the other, came each to the other’s arms.