The girl was very tractable:  she lay perfectly still.  He looked into her pale face; her eyes were wide open, staring straight up at the feeble stars.  Every minute or so he cried aloud, or whistled a shrill call between his teeth, but the action did not disturb the flow of his thoughts.  Despite the peculiarity of his position, he had drifted into a strange mood of introspection.  Why had he done this thing?  What was the girl to him that at the first sight of her danger he should have forgotten his philosophy of self, his pride in his contempt for his kind, and his fine aloofness?  She was no more in his life than any other of the four hundred strangers on board.  The act of leaping into the sea had been a mere impulse, the prompting of an unsuspected instinct.  She might hate his race, but he was still its slave.  All his life he had been an Ishmael, feared and disliked; humankind had given him only cause to hate and despise it, and yet blood remained stronger than belief when a human life was in peril.  The young man laughed, and the boat’s from the Francis Cadman, drawing near, heard the mocking laughter and ceased rowing, chilled with a superstitious terror.

‘Good God!’ cried the look-out, ’there’s two of ’em.’

The sailors turned in their seats, staring in stupid awe at two heads clearly visible in the moonlight that lay like silver gossamer on the dark green sea—­two heads where they had expected to find but one.  The boatswain, frozen in the forward movement of his swing, glared open-mouthed, speechless; he felt his stiff hair stirring strangely under his hat, a pronounced uneasiness moved in the boat.  Only one woman had fallen from the ship, and here, out in the deep trough of the lone sea, they found two creatures, and one laughed eerily.  Sailormen believed in many awesome mysteries:  ghosts and goblins peopled the ocean like a vast graveyard.  The boat held off, and no man spoke, but Ryan shivered under his skin, and fumbled his memory for the name of a potent saint.

‘Ahoy, there!’ cried the young man impatiently; but winning no response, he swam slowly to meet the boat as she drifted.  He raised the girl, and one of the men seized her mechanically, and drew her limp form from the water.  No hand was offered to the rescuer, but as the boat lifted he seized her prow, and drew himself aboard.  All eyes were upon him, staring dubiously.

‘Divil take me if it ain’t the Hermit!’ gasped Ryan, with an expiration of intense relief.

Coleman’s stony expression instantly relaxed, he recovered himself with a jerk of the bead.

‘Well,’ he murmured bitterly, ’of all the stuck pigs!  What the blue fury ‘re ye all sittin’ garpin’ at like a lot o’ demented damn kelpies?  Give way there!  How’s the young lady, Smith?’

‘She don’ seem perticler bad,’ answered Smith doubtfully.  He was struggling to wrap his charge in a length of stiff, crackling sailcloth, puzzled by the white face of the girl.