No moon, no stars, were visible; we had no light of any kind, nor could we ascertain the damage done until the cold, gray morning broke in gloom and rain upon us.  Then it was made plain to us that our food had all been swept overboard—­together with six seamen and five of the passengers.  There remained on the raft only three shuddering women and a little child—­and a handful of weary and discouraged men, sustained and led to a sense of duty by the dauntless master-spirit of one alone—­the presence of Christian Garth, indomitable through all hardships.  So it had fared with us for six-and-thirty hours of our experience on “our floating grave.”

We had been washed from our little platform, which ordinarily lifted us above the lapping of the sea during the prevalence of the storm—­and we regained it now, glad to repose even on the sea-soaked mattresses bereft of awning.  By the mercy of God some glutinous sea-zoophytes had been tangled among them, and by the help of the brine-soaked biscuit in my pocket (crammed there, it may be remembered, as a precious hoard for a time of dire necessity, on the morning of the fire, by the small, cunning fingers of the sickly child), we breakfasted, or rather broke our fast—­we four, the child, the negress, Ada Greene, and I—­and life was aroused again in every breast by means of a briny morsel.

“A cup of coffee would not be amiss just now,” said the girl, laughing, “but the Lord knows we can wait.”

There was a strange, bright light in the eyes of the young girl as she spoke these words, and she was arraying her hair coquettishly with some bunches of sea-weed, which had been cast up by the storm, and from which the eager, famishing lips of the little boy had been permitted to suck the gluten before discarding the skeleton stems.

That hair was in itself a grace and glory—­rippling from crown to waist in sheeny, golden splendor, fine as silk, and glossy as the yellow floss threads of pale, ripe Indian-corn—­beautiful, even in its dishevelled and drenched condition, as an artist’s dream.  Devoid as it was of regular beauty, the face beneath, with its clear blue eyes, red lips, and pure complexion, the pink and white that reminds one of a sweet-pea or ocean-shell, had struck me as very lovely from the first; nothing to support this groundwork of excellence had I discovered, however, either in the form of the head, which was ignoble, or the expression of the face, which was both timid and defiant, or the tones of the voice, which were shrill and harsh by turns—­yet, as my fellow-voyager and sufferer, I was interested in this young creature, not forgetting, either, her attention during my pending swoon, of which mention has been made.