Part 38 (2/2)

The quiet, easy death of the deep waters, the death by drowning, he would have welcoether But now? The picture of her, rent liers of the sea! Horror!

That put another face on the affair The shi+p was already passing

With two on the hatch, the latter was subed, and their heads presented no point of attraction But with only one upon it, it would float flush with the surface, and its dark, oblong shape would stand a far greater chance of being sighted fro stea

”Kiss ether on the hatch Shuddering, shrinking still with the horror of that last terrible fright, she clung to him, and thus-- their lips washed by the phosphorescent brine of the tropical ocean, in the extreme moment of their peril--they kissed Gently, but forcibly, parting her grasp, Roden raised his head, and sent forth over the waste of waters a long, piercing, pealing shout Then, sliding froht, rose i square upon the surface, the dark wood fra its white burden in its midst

But the moments vent by, and still no hideous stain rose to eht Had the dauntless resolution of his sacrifice carried hi sea-tigers did not penetrate? It seemed so ”Love! love!

where are you?” whispered Mona, her exhausted voice ith alar out over the immensity of space as even to surpass that call for help uttered with the last breath of a dying iven your life for mine! O God!

O God! take mine, for it is worthless to me now!”

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

CONCLUSION

”We therefore commit her body to the deep”

The voice of the captain of the _Launceston Castle_ takes on more than the ordinary solemnity which almost invariably comes into the voice of the nonprofessional reader of that most solemn office, the Burial of the Dead at Sea The deers alike--is more than ordinarily sole aloud There is soe of a terrible dra thus cast up in their midst: this royally beautiful forrace, found floating, lashed to the ring-bolts of a shi+p's hatch; alone in the immensity of ocean; rescued froain For Mona is dead Her overwhelrief, combined with her recent terrors and exhaustion, had done its work; and no sooner had they safely lifted her to the deck of the _Launceston Castle_ than the spirit fled, leaving a na upon the lips of its forsaken tenement, and that name they who stood by could hear

Yet it was a name which, coupled with many a passionate adjuration, had been heard already and htened of its double weight, rose above the surface, its dark oblong at once attracted the eyes of the look-out on board the _Launceston Castle_, outward bound At the saony and despair came faintly yet distinctly to horror-stricken ears

The officer in charge of the boat which took off the frenzied, delirious castaway frolean, aoutlines of a life's drama and a deliberate and exalted act of self-sacrifice, but a very fair inkling of the nature and nitude of the hideous catastrophe which had befallen; and as a direct result the shi+p was enabled, within a day or so, to pick up two boatloads of the survivors of the ill-fated _Scythian_

And now the flag drooping at half-mast, the propeller of the _Launceston Castle_, slowed down al drearily in the depths as though in soe, a ofin his bronzed, knotted grasp, pronounces the commendatory words:

”'We therefore commit her body to the deep--to be turned into corruption--looking for the resurrection of the body--when the Sea shall give up her dead'”

There is a hollow, splashless plunge All is over

Far down into the dione And there, where he who gave his life for her, and gave it in vain, has already gone, she will rest--they both will rest--until the Sea shall give up her dead

The End