It will be very hard for us both, I fear."

Her butler announced luncheon.






CHAPTER IV

WRECKAGE





The man had been desperately ill in soul and mind and body. And now
in some curious manner the ocean seemed to be making him physically
better but spiritually worse. Something, too, in the horizonwide
waste of waters was having a sinister effect on his brain. The grey
daylight of early May, bitter as December--the utter desolation, the
mounting and raucous menace of the sea, were meddling with normal
convalescence.

Dull animosity awoke in a battered mind not yet readjusted to the
living world. What had these people done to him anyway? The sullen
resentment which invaded him groped stealthily for a vent.

Was THIS, then, their cursed cure?--this foggy nightmare through