Agatha was silent a while.

“What do you think death means?  Shall we be we to-morrow, say, provided we can’t keep afloat?” she asked by and by.

“Why, yes, I think so,” said Jim.  “I don’t know why or how, but I guess we go on somewhere; and I rather think our best moments here—­our moments of happiness or heroism, if we ever have any—­are going to be the regular thing.”  Jim laughed a little, partly at his own lame ending, and partly because he felt Agatha’s hand closing more tightly over his.  He didn’t want her to get blue just yet, after her brave fight.

But Agatha wasn’t blue.  She answered thoughtfully:  “That isn’t a bad idea,” and then cheerfully turned to a consideration of the possibilities of a rescue at dawn.

James had evolved a plan to wait till enough light came to enable them to reach the Jeanne D’Arc, if she was still afloat; then to climb aboard and hunt for provisions and life preservers or something to use for a raft.  If he could do this, then they would be in a somewhat better plight, at least for a time.  He prayed that the Jeanne D’Arc might still be alive.

The two talked little, leaving silences between them full of wonder.  The details of life, the ordinary personalities, were blotted out.  Without explanation or speech of any kind, they understood each other.  They were not, in this hour, members of a complex and artificial society; they were not even man and woman; they were two souls stripped of everything but the need for fortitude and sweetness.

At last came the dawn.  Slowly the blue curtain of night lifted, lifted, until it became the blue curtain of sky, endlessly far away and far above.  A twinkling star looked down on the cup of ocean, glimmered a moment and was gone.  The light strengthened.  A pearly, iridescent quiver came upon the waters, repeating itself wave after wave, and heralded the coming of the Lord Sun over the great murmuring sea.  As the light grew, they could see a constantly widening circle of ocean, of which they were the center.  As they rose and fell with the waves, the horizon fell and rose to their vision, dim and undefined.  Hand in hand they floated in vaporous silver.

“The day has come at last, thank God!” breathed James.

“Yes, thank God!” answered the girl.

“Are you very cold?”

“The sun will soon warm us.”

“Where did you learn to swim?”

“In England, mostly at the Isle of Wight, but I’m not half such a dolphin as you are.”

“Oh, well, boys have to swim, you know, and I was a boy once,” Jim answered awkwardly.  Presently he asked, and his voice was full of awe:  “Have you ever seen the dawn—­a dawn like this—­before?”

“Never one like this,” she whispered.

When daylight came, they found they had not traveled far from the scene of the night’s disaster; or, if they had, the Jeanne D’Arc had drifted with them.  She was still afloat, and just as the sun rose they saw her, apparently not far away, tossing rudderless to the waves.  There was no sign of the ship’s boats.