She tried to assume a sitting posture, and instinctively her hands traveled to her disarranged costume.

“How ridiculous!” she said, with a little note of annoyance in her voice, which sounded curiously hollow.  But her brave spirit could not yet command her enfeebled frame.  She was perforce compelled to sink back to the support of his knee and arm.

“Do you think you could lie quiet until I try to find some water?” he gasped anxiously.

She nodded a childlike acquiescence, and her eyelids fell.  It was only that her eyes smarted dreadfully from the salt water, but the sailor was sure that this was a premonition of a lapse to unconsciousness.

“Please try not to faint again,” he said.  “Don’t you think I had better loosen these things?  You can breathe more easily.”

A ghost of a smile flickered on her lips.  “No—­no,” she murmured.  “My eyes hurt me—­that is all.  Is there—­any—­water?”

He laid her tenderly on the sand and rose to his feet.  His first glance was towards the sea.  He saw something which made him blink with astonishment.  A heavy sea was still running over the barrier reef which enclosed a small lagoon.  The contrast between the fierce commotion outside and the comparatively smooth surface of the protected pool was very marked.  At low tide the lagoon was almost completely isolated.  Indeed, he imagined that only a fierce gale blowing from the north-west would enable the waves to leap the reef, save where a strip of broken water, surging far into the small natural harbor, betrayed the position of the tiny entrance.

Yet at this very point a fine cocoanut palm reared its stately column high in air, and its long tremulous fronds were now swinging wildly before the gale.  From where he stood it appeared to be growing in the midst of the sea, for huge breakers completely hid the coral embankment.  This sentinel of the land had a weirdly impressive effect.  It was the only fixed object in the waste of foam-capped waves.  Not a vestige of the Sirdar remained seaward, but the sand was littered with wreckage, and—­mournful spectacle!—­a considerable number of inanimate human forms lay huddled up amidst the relics of the steamer.

This discovery stirred him to action.  He turned to survey the land on which he was stranded with his helpless companion.  To his great relief he discovered that it was lofty and tree-clad.  He knew that the ship could not have drifted to Borneo, which still lay far to the south.  This must be one of the hundreds of islands which stud the China Sea and provide resorts for Hainan fishermen.  Probably it was inhabited, though he thought it strange that none of the islanders had put in an appearance.  In any event, water and food, of some sort, were assured.

But before setting out upon his quest two things demanded attention.  The girl must be removed from her present position.  It would be too horrible to permit her first conscious gaze to rest upon those crumpled objects on the beach.  Common humanity demanded, too, that he should hastily examine each of the bodies in case life was not wholly extinct.