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Drawing the aluminum paddle from its sheath alongside the vacuum-belt, he drove himself toward that reply.

“Romney!”

“Here! Oh, here, here!”

“Safe?”

“Yes!” She shouted, as he neared her.

“Are you?”

“Yes — thank God!”

He labored hard, and made his way to her. Each searched the other’s face, wan and haggard under the moonlight and the flare of the signals.

“Oh, Norford!” she gasped, her teeth still chattering violently, for even in those latitudes the sea was chill.

“Romney!” He exclaimed, reaching out to her. Their hands clasped and held. And silence fell between them.

So few now, and so far, had become the scattered signal-lights still remaining that the two seemed all alone there together in a universe of deep, impassive sky and restless sea that loomed away, away to nothingness. Above, the clouds had now cleared a little, showing patches of the heavens, infinite abysses of space where shone diadems of mild-glowing stars, softened by the tropic moonlight.

A sibilant hissing all at once drew’ Hale’s attention.

“What’s that?” He asked, listening keenly. At first he did not understand; but as the sound continued, with an ominous gurgitation of water, he suddenly knew. The greater depth to which he was now sinking — the rapid disappearance of his buoyancy — these alone would have told him the truth.

For a moment numb dread possessed him, but he mastered it. He forced himself to speak with an approach to calm.

“Romney,” asked he, “If — if you should be left all alone here, would you be very much afraid? Would you hold your nerve and — try to wait for rescue?”

“Alone?” She cried. “How — why?”

“You may as well know,” he answered plainly. “You’ll have to, anyhow, in a minute or two. My vacuum — belt has sprung a leak. Hear that sound? Air and water are entering it. In a very short time — well — ”

“You mean — ?”

“Yes, Romney. It’s a case of goodbye. Your belt, alone, can’t possibly sustain us both. Here, girl! Give me your hand again. I’ll just say goodbye, and God keep you! Then I’ll paddle away. Of course ‘you understand you mustn’t see — ”

Aghast, she stared at him. Then sudden fire leaped into her wide eyes. “Take mine, and let me go!”

“What?”

“I’m of no use in the world! It will never miss me. You, with all your splendid achievements and powers-”

“Nonsense, Romney! You’re mad!”

“I’m going to do it, I tell you I” she cried passionately. “You’ve been my ideal for years — it doesn’t matter now if I tell you. You shan’t die; you mustn’t! I showed myself a coward when you saved me from the ship. Now let me show myself a woman! I’ve lived empty and idle. Let me die to serve the world — and you!”

Already she was laboring at the buckles, to loosen them. He seized her hands and held them fast.

“No, no, no!” He forbade her. Already he was sinking far lower. “You mustn’t, Romney — mine-you can’t now it’s too late!”

She struggled to free herself for her stem purpose. He, seizing his paddle, struck out away from her.

“Norford! Come back, come back!” She gasped.

‘’’Good-by — God keep you, Romney!” He answered, now sunk far into the heaving hills of brine. A great calm and a supreme gratitude enfolded him. The girl, he felt, was safe. And he, unable to loosen the metallic belt, must in a minute or two be drawn into the depths of rest eternal.

“I’ve lived a man’s life” — the thought soothed him. “I shall die a man’s death. For that, thank God!”

He ceased his paddling, now that he had attained a fitting distance, and for a moment lay inert, hearkening the ever more rapid gurgle of the incoming air and water. More and more heavily now he wallowed, his buoyancy all gone. He reached a weary hand and extinguished his light. Romney should not, at least, see that disappear beneath the sea-floor, when the final moment came.

An echo of a long forgotten sonnet rose to him:

Drained is the cup that holds both Heaven and Hell; Peace deep as peace of those divinely drowned

In leagues of moonlit waters, wraps me round.