"Bread," he whispered. "The body--"

He shattered the water breaker with his fist. There was a suggestion of
moisture on the inside of the staves of the cask. He drew his finger
across them and touched it to the woman's lips.

"Water," he said hoarsely. "The blood--"

The terror, the yearning, disappeared from the woman's eyes. She looked
at the man sanely, gratefully.

"God bless--" she faltered and then her lips stiffened.

Some tag of quaint old Scripture that had impressed him when he first
heard it because of its very strangeness, but of which he had never
thought in all the years of his rough life since boyhood, came into the
man's mind now. He lifted his head as if to see again that figure.

"A priest forever," he gasped, "after the order of Melchis--"

He did not finish the word. The woman was dead. He knew now for what he
had been kept alive. His task had been performed. He bowed his head in
his hands and entered into life eternal with the others.

Presently a little cloud flecked the sky. Out of the south the wind blew
softly. The smooth sea rippled blue and white in the gentle breeze. The
little boat, cradling its dead, rocked gently as it drifted on.