“I just can’t,” she panted.  “It’s dead beat I am.”

“Lie down,” he commanded, pointing to the bottom boards.  “Here—­take my coat—­”

He picked his jacket up from the stern-sheets and tossed it to her.  His face was white and wearied almost as hers, yet, strange to say, quite cheerful and confident, although patently every second now was driving the boat down Channel, and wider of its goal.  For a moment it appeared that she would resist.  But, as she caught the coat, weakness overcame her, her knees gave way, and she dropped in a huddled heap.  ’Dolph ran to her with a sharp whine, and fell to licking the hand and wrist that lay inert across the thwart.  The touch of his tongue revived her, and by and by she managed to reach out and draw his warm body close to her, where he was content to lie, reassured by the beating of her heart.

“That’s right!”

The boy spread his jacket over her, and went aft again.  He did not resume his paddling, for this indeed was plainly useless.  Already on his right hand the Island was slipping, or seemed to be slipping, away into darkness.  But he did not lose it, for after a while the climbing moon stood right above it, linking it to the boat by a chain of light that rippled and wavered as if to mock him.

But he was not mocked.  He had faith all the while.  He longed for the secret by which that shining chain could be hauled upon, by which to follow up that glittering pathway; but he never doubted.  By whatever gods might be, he had been brought thus far, and now sooner or later the last miracle was bound to happen.  He had been foolish to struggle so, and to wear Tilda out.  He would sit still and wait.

And while he sat there and waited he began, of a sudden and at unawares, to sing to himself.  It was the same tuneless chant that had taken possession of him by Harvington-on-Avon; but more instant now and more confident, breaking from him now upon the open sea, with moon and stars above him.  Tilda did not hear it, for she slept.  He himself was hardly conscious of it.  His thoughts were on the Island, on the miracle that was going to happen.  He did not know that it had already begun to happen; that the tide was already slackening; nor, had he marked it, would he have understood.  For almost an hour he sang on, and so slipped down in the stern-sheets and slept.

By and by, while he slept, the tide reached its ebb and came stealing back, drawing with it a breeze from the south-west.

He awoke to a sound which at first he mistook for the cawing of rooks—­ there had been many rooks in the trees beyond the wall of Holy Innocents, between it and the Brewery.  But, gazing aloft, he saw that these were sea-gulls, wheeling and mewing and making a mighty pother.  And then—­O wonder!—­as he rubbed his eyes he looked up at a tall cliff, a wall of rock rising sheer, and a good hundred feet from its base where the white water was breaking.  The boat had drifted almost within the back-draught, and it was to warn him that the gulls were calling.