“I prefer to risk it rather than remain here.”

“But it is much further off than it seems to be; these waters are full of sharks and you will never live to swim half the distance.  Dismiss the idea at once.”

“Good-by!”

And the brave woman took a header into the sea, and with a long graceful stroke, that compelled the admiration of every one of the amazed survivors, began swimming toward the supposed refuge.

But the chief-officer knew more about the difficulties in her way than she did.  She grievously miscalculated the distance, and, though she was a swimmer of amazing skill and endurance, she began to believe she had undertaken a task beyond her power of accomplishment.

She swam directly toward the island, husbanding her strength like a wise person, but making steady progress, until before the afternoon was half gone, she knew she had placed many a long mile behind her.  When she looked back she could see nothing of the raft and her friends, but as she rose on the crest of an immense swell, she plainly discerned the island.  It still was in the verge of the horizon, and it was hard for her to see that she was apparently no nearer to it than when she started.

Besides this alarming fact, she was threatened by a still greater peril.  As the chief-officer had warned her, the waters abounded with sharks, of the man-eating species, who were liable to dart forward and seize her at any moment; but, in recalling her extraordinary experience, Miss Lacy says that at no time did she feel any fear of them.  She knew they were liable to discover her at any moment, but they did not, and fortunately indeed she escaped their ferocious jaws.

Her greatest suffering was from the blazing sun, whose rays shot downward upon her head with pitiless power.  When she found her brain growing dizzy, she averted the danger of sunstroke by dropping or swimming for some distance below the surface.  This always cooled or refreshed her, though she felt her face and neck blistering under the fierce rays.

In striving to recall her experience, Miss Lacy is unable to remember a large portion of the time she spent in the water.  She believes she slept for several hours.  What an extraordinary situation!  Alone in the midst of the vast strait in the southern Pacific, surrounded by sharks, with no friendly sail in sight, and yet slumbering and unconscious.

Of course she was not swimming all this time.  When she found herself growing weary, she floated on her back for long periods, then propelled herself first upon one side and then upon the other, and all the time the dim misty object in the distance remained as far away as ever.  Finally, when she raised her head and looked for it, she was dismayed at being unable to detect it at all.  It had vanished.

Then she knew that it had been an optical delusion from the first.  There was no island or land in sight.  She was alone on the vast deep.