The blue flare showed a very little nearer. There was nothing to be done
but talk and wait.

"No; England," he answered in a tone full of meaning--"things in
England--people there. One person at least."

To me his words and his smile seemed to imply a bitter irony; but they
were said very earnestly.

Castro had hauled the helpless form of old Rangsley forward. I caught
him muttering savagely:

"I could kill that old man!"

He did not want to be drowned; neither assuredly did I. But it was not
fear so much as a feeling of dreariness and disappointment that had come
over me, the sudden feeling that I was going not to adventure, but to
death; that here was not romance, but an end--a disenchanted surprise
that it should soon be all over.

We kept a grim silence. Further out in the bay, we were caught in a
heavy squall. Sitting by the tiller, I got as much out of her as I knew
how. We would go as far as we could before the run was over. Carlos
bailed unceasingly, and without a word of complaint, sticking to his
self-appointed task as if in very truth he were careless of life.
A feeling came over me that this, indeed, was the elevated and the
romantic. Perhaps he was tired of his life; perhaps he really regretted
what he left behind him in England, or somewhere else--some association,
some woman. But he, at least, if we went down together, would