“You’re trembling, both of you,” the captain said, “and I can’t blame you. If it’s any comfort to you, I think you’re the bravest two boys I ever knew. I would have been proud to have had a couple of sons like you.” The captain pressed their arms affectionately. Garry knew how he felt about his helplessness to do anything. “You ask if there’s anything we could do,” Captain Eaton said. “Of course we’re not giving up hope completely at this early stage, but things do look bad. We could ration ourselves severely and maybe prolong our existence a few days, but after that....” Garry finished the gloomy sentence in his own mind. 16. A SAD PARTING They _did_ wait—all the long day to follow. And in all that time, no one came. They did the same things that they had done the day before—reading by the light of the earth, which they feared they would never see again; reading until their eyes blurred and the battery had gone dead in their only flashlight. Garry and Patch did not read much. Instead, they spent most of their time looking out over the cold gray dust, and up into the black sky, looking hopefully for some moving object against the bleak wilderness and wanting to be the first to spot it should it appear. But it never appeared, and bed-time came, but no one was in the spirit for sleep. And yet, since there was little else to do, everyone prepared for bed. Garry and Patch lay awake in their adjoining seats, talking in low voices to each other. “Garry, we’ve been through a lot of close calls since we left the orphanage,” Patch was saying, “but this looks like _it_, doesn’t it?” “I don’t know, Patch. I just don’t know,” his friend replied with a troubled sigh. “It sure doesn’t look good. I won’t ever really give up hope, though. There’s still a chance that a rescue ship will come—maybe during the night.” “But what if it doesn’t?” Patch asked. “What if it doesn’t come tonight or tomorrow—or the next night? How will we feel when we finally _know_ that we won’t be saved?” “You shouldn’t think like that, Patch. It’ll make you miserable. You’ve got to keep hoping, even when it doesn’t make sense,” Garry said. “It’s funny about Ben,” Patch went on. “I mean about what he did. He meant to save us, but it’s turned out that he’s made it worse for us. It would have been better if we had crashed along with the _Carefree_, because then it would have been over quickly.” “You know the saying, Patch: ‘Where there’s life there’s hope.’ And I believe that.” Patch said no more, and before long Garry heard him snoring softly. This made Garry feel better, and presently he too fell asleep. Garry and Patch woke the next morning to the sound of subdued voices around them. For a brief moment Garry wondered if help had come during the night. He searched the faces he saw, and quickly his hopes were dashed. Instead of happy faces, they were haggard ones that showed the lack of sleep, and there were no new faces among them.