The man nodded. Tenderly he laid his hot wasted hand on the woman's
fevered brow.

"A priest," she said, looking up at him uncomprehendingly.

She was evidently going fast yet she knew what she wanted although she
was not conscious that she craved the impossible. It would appear that
she had been a good churchwoman. The man could only stare. He was no
priest, only a rough sailor.

"A priest," said the woman more clearly. "I want--a priest--the
sacrament." By some nervous convulsive effort she lifted her arms up
toward him beseeching, appealing. There was another kind of agony in her
voice that had not been present when she had moaned for water in the
days before.

"The sacrament," she insisted, "I die."

The man looked away. Hard by the boat where there had been but a waste
of sea rose a green island. A stretch of pleasant meadow met his eyes.
It was so close to him that if he had leaned over the gunwale of the
boat he could have laid his hand on the lush grass. Dumbly he wondered
where it had been before, how he had come upon it so suddenly, why he
had not seen it hours ago.

In front of him were hundreds of people, men, women, and children, plain
people in strange simple garb, the like of which he had never seen. In
front of these people and with their backs toward him stood a little
group of men, in the center a figure in white garments. A lad offered
something in a basket.