During hours of this tossing and plunging, this tearing of the wind and battering of the sea, no one was lost.  The sailors were clustered around the boats, some clinging to the davits and others lashed to belaying pins, exhausted by long labor, want of sleep, and constant soakings, but ready to fight for life to the last.  Coronado and Garcia were still fast to the backstays, the former a good deal wilted by his hardships, and the latter whimpering.  Thurstane had literally seized up Clara to the outside of the weather shrouds, so that, although she was terribly jammed by the wind, she could not be carried away by it, while she was above the heaviest pounding of the seas.  His own position was alongside of her, secured in like manner by ends of cordage.

Sometimes he held her hand, and sometimes her waist.  She could lean her shoulder against his, and she did so nearly all the while.  Her eyes were fixed as often on his face as on the breakers which threatened her life.  The few words that she spoke were more likely to be confessions of love than of terror.  Now and then, when a billow of unusual size had slipped harmlessly by, he gratefully and almost joyously drew her close to him, uttering a few syllables of cheer.  She thanked him by sending all her affectionate heart through her eyes into his.

Although there had been no explanations as to the past, they understood each other’s present feelings.  It could not be, he was sure, that she clung to him thus and looked at him thus merely because she wanted him to save her life.  She had been detached from him by others, he said; she had been drawn away from thinking of him during his absence; she had been brought to judge, perhaps wisely, that she ought not to marry a poor man; but now that she saw him again she loved him as of old, and, standing at death’s door, she felt at liberty to confess it.  Thus did he translate to himself a past that had no existence.  He still believed that she had dismissed him, and that she had done it with cruel harshness.  But he could not resent her conduct; he believed what he did and forgave her; he believed it, and loved her.

There were moments when it was delightful for them to be as they were.  As they held fast to each other, though drenched and exhausted and in mortal peril, they had a sensation as if they were warm.  The hearts were beating hotly clean through the wet frames and the dripping clothing.

“Oh, my love!” was a phrase which Clara repeated many times with an air of deep content.

Once she said, “My love, I never thought to die so easily.  How horrible it would have been without you!”

Again she murmured, “I have prayed many, many times to have you.  I did not know how the answer would come.  But this is it.”

“My darling, I have had visions about you,” was another of these confessions.  “When I had been praying for you nearly all one night, there was a great light came into the room.  It was some promise for you.  I knew it was then; something told me so.  Oh, how happy I was!”