We both looked over towards the sea chest against which the cook’s head was propped. The girl had crossed the raft to where the improvised mast bore its fluttering signal of distress, but the cook was furtively chewing a mouthful.

I crawled upon my hands and knees to where the girl was.

“I’ll kill the next man you feed,” I said. “Eat your bread yourself.”

“You got the last mouthful,” she said.

Never a suspicion that she might be lying crossed my mind. I paid no more attention to the girl. My mind was obsessed by another notion. I thought I would swoon as I retraced my path to where Jinks was lying.

“Say!” I said hoarsely, “you say you’re willing to die to make a meal for the rest of us?”

“My God, yes!”

“How are we going to kill you?”

Jinks stared wildly about. There were two blunt knives aboard and an axe. I took no stock in the axe. Not one of us had the strength left to lift it. The knives were too blunt to be of use in opening a vein, for the simple reason that every man on the raft had been brought so low by hunger and weakness that he could not have pressed it even against his own skinny wrist.

“I’ll tie a handkerchief about my throat and stangle,” said Jinks.

He had the knot tied in a jiffy, but he was too weak to pull with enough energy for strangulation. He gave up in five minutes and lay still.

But the procedure of Jinks had given me a suggestion. I crawled over to the one bit of rope still with us. It bound the timbers of the raft we had hastily constructed when the ship went down. But try as I might, it was too strongly knotted to be unloosed by any effort of a starving man.

Here was a crisis, indeed. Our one hope of life was the slaughter of a man, but here were we too weak from loss of food and drink to be capable of murder.

“Mr. Blake!”

Starved though I was, I almost started up. The girl’s lips were once more at my ear.

“I must tell you something,” she gasped.

Her long hair fell in a cascade about my face. She turned to look at the others behind me, as if she were fearful of some secret of which she might be sole guardian. In another moment I knew what the secret was, because she bent her head over mine and kissed my lips.

How cool her mouth was! It was like a long, cold drink.

“Now you know,” she whispered. “I love you. Wait one more day for me.”

In another minute she was making her way back to the cook’s side. I saw her dip her rag into the flowing sea and swab his horrible feet as he lay against the sea chest. But I thought no more of death.

Slowly and heavily the burning sun dropped into the waters far beyond the sky. Out peered the stars. The starving men all about me lay like logs of the raft that bore them on, on. I could barely discern the shadows we made as midnight drew forward and brought the moon up the sky.