After scanning the horizon for the thousandth time the man’s burning eyes sought those of the woman at his feet.  He was astonished to find them open.  Her mouth was working, her parched lips strove to form words.  He dropped the tiller which his hand had grasped mechanically, and which was useless since there was no way on the boat, and bent his head lower.  Some sudden recrudescence of strength which the dying sometimes receive came to the woman.

“Death,” she whispered.  “Glad.”  She turned her head slightly and saw the form of the child.  “The Baby—­and—­I—­together.”

The man nodded.  Tenderly he laid his hot wasted hand on the woman’s fevered brow.

“A priest,” she said, looking up at him uncomprehendingly.

She was evidently going fast yet she knew what she wanted although she was not conscious that she craved the impossible.  It would appear that she had been a good churchwoman.  The man could only stare.  He was no priest, only a rough sailor.

“A priest,” said the woman more clearly.  “I want—­a priest—­the sacrament.”  By some nervous convulsive effort she lifted her arms up toward him beseeching, appealing.  There was another kind of agony in her voice that had not been present when she had moaned for water in the days before.

“The sacrament,” she insisted, “I die.”

The man looked away.  Hard by the boat where there had been but a waste of sea rose a green island.  A stretch of pleasant meadow met his eyes.  It was so close to him that if he had leaned over the gunwale of the boat he could have laid his hand on the lush grass.  Dumbly he wondered where it had been before, how he had come upon it so suddenly, why he had not seen it hours ago.

In front of him were hundreds of people, men, women, and children, plain people in strange simple garb, the like of which he had never seen.  In front of these people and with their backs toward him stood a little group of men, in the center a figure in white garments.  A lad offered something in a basket.

The man watched, amazed, awe-stricken, yet with a strange peace in his soul.  He made no movement to gain the shore.  He only looked and looked.  The white-robed figure bent over the basket.  He lifted from it a crude rough loaf of bread.  He raised his eyes to heaven, his lips moved.  He broke the bread and gave it.

As the sailor watched the island disappeared as suddenly as it had come.  The scene changed.  Now he looked into a low room, dimly lighted with strange lamps.  Through an open window he saw the stars.  The few men that had stood about the man in the grassy meadow were alone with him in that upper chamber reclining about a table.  The man lifted from the board a cup of silver.  He blessed it and gave it.  The fragrance of wine came to the watcher.

He rubbed his eyes and looked again and before him spread the smooth unbroken surface of the monotonous sea.  The woman’s voice smote his ear again, higher, shriller, with more painful entreaty.