I was floating to it.  It contained the solution of all my doubts, the answer to all my conjectures.  It was Bertha’s reply to my declaration of love, and I was drifting slowly but surely toward it.  Soon I would know.

But after a time the course of the Sparhawk or the course of the message changed.  I drifted to the north.  Little by little my course deviated from the line on which I might have met the message.  At last I saw that I should never meet it.  When I became convinced of this, my first impulse was to spring overboard and swim for it.  But I restrained this impulse, as I had restrained others like it.  If Bertha came back, I must be ready to meet her.  I must run no risks, for her sake and my sake.  She must find me on the Sparhawk if she should come back.  She had left me and she had come back; she might come back again.  Even to get her message I must not run the risk of missing her.  And so with yearning heart and perhaps tearful eyes I watched the little craft disappear and become another derelict.

I do not know how many days and nights I watched and waited for Bertha’s ship and wondered and conjectured what Mary Phillips meant by “but.”  I was awake so much and ate so little and thought so hard that I lost strength, both of mind and body.  All I asked of my body was to look out for Bertha’s steamer, and all that I asked of my mind was to resolve the meaning of the last words I had heard from that vessel.

One day, I do not know whether it was in the morning or afternoon, I raised my head, and on the horizon I saw a steamer.  Quick as a flash my glass was brought to bear upon it.  In the next minute my arms dropped, the telescope fell into my lap, my head dropped.  It was not Bertha’s steamer; it was an ordinary steamer with its deck parallel with the water and a long line of smoke coming out of its funnel.  The shock of the disappointment was very great.

When I looked up again I could see that the steamer was headed directly toward me, and was approaching with considerable rapidity.  But this fact affected me little.  It would not bring me Bertha.  It would not bring me any message from her.  It was an ordinary vessel of traffic.  I took no great interest in it, one way or the other.

Before long it was so near that I could see people on board.  I arose and looked over the rail.  Then some one on the steamer fired a gun or a pistol.  As this seemed to be a signal, I waved my hat.  Then the steamer began to move more slowly, and soon lay to and lowered a boat.

In ten minutes three men stood on the deck of the Sparhawk.  Some one had hailed me in English to lower something.  I had lowered nothing; but here they were on deck.  They asked me a lot of questions, but I answered none of them.

“Is your captain with you?” I said.  They answered that he was not, that he was on the steamer.  “Then take me to him,” said I.

“Of course we will,” said their leader, with a smile.  And they took me.