surviving the shipwreck as by a miracle, had drifted on.

For three weeks in vain they had scanned the horizon for a sail. Their
scanty supply of bread and water had been consumed in ten days.
Thereafter they had nothing. The baby had died first, next a man whose
arm had been broken by a falling spar in the disaster, and then the
ship's cabin boy. The survivors were a man and a woman. They were both
far gone. The woman was plainly dying. The man kept himself up by sheer
exercise of will.

Their drifting had been northward toward warmer seas. It was winter in
their home land and, though they knew it not, Christmas day. There the
tropic sun blazed overhead from an absolutely cloudless sky. There was
no vestige of breeze to stir the canvas of the solitary sail or ripple
the glassy surface of the smoothed out ocean. The boat lay still. Not
even the iron man at the helm could have lifted an oar. It had been dead
calm for days. Speech there was none except in the gravest necessity. To
talk connectedly was impossible.

After scanning the horizon for the thousandth time the man's burning
eyes sought those of the woman at his feet. He was astonished to find
them open. Her mouth was working, her parched lips strove to form words.
He dropped the tiller which his hand had grasped mechanically, and which
was useless since there was no way on the boat, and bent his head lower.
Some sudden recrudescence of strength which the dying sometimes receive
came to the woman.

"Death," she whispered. "Glad." She turned her head slightly and saw the
form of the child. "The Baby--and--I--together."