But Hilda thought nothing of such physical danger.  “We have saved him, Hubert!” she cried, clasping her hands.  “We have saved him!  But do you think he is alive?  For unless he is, my chance, our chance, is gone forever!”

I bent over and felt his pulse.  As far as I could make out, it still beat feebly.

CHAPTER XII

THE EPISODE OF THE DEAD MAN WHO SPOKE

I will not trouble you with details of those three terrible days and nights when we drifted helplessly about at the mercy of the currents on our improvised life-raft up and down the English Channel.  The first night was the worst.  Slowly after that we grew used to the danger, the cold, the hunger, and the thirst.  Our senses were numbed; we passed whole hours together in a sort of torpor, just vaguely wondering whether a ship would come in sight to save us, obeying the merciful law that those who are utterly exhausted are incapable of acute fear, and acquiescing in the probability of our own extinction.  But however slender the chance—­ and as the hours stole on it seemed slender enough—­Hilda still kept her hopes fixed mainly on Sebastian.  No daughter could have watched the father she loved more eagerly and closely than Hilda watched her life-long enemy—­the man who had wrought such evil upon her and hers.  To save our own lives without him would be useless.  At all hazards, she must keep him alive, on the bare chance of a rescue.  If he died, there died with him the last hope of justice and redress.

As for Sebastian, after the first half-hour, during which he lay white and unconscious, he opened his eyes faintly, as we could see by the moonlight, and gazed around him with a strange, puzzled state of inquiry.  Then his senses returned to him by degrees.  “What! you, Cumberledge?” he murmured, measuring me with his eye; “and you, Nurse Wade?  Well, I thought you would manage it.”  There was a tone almost of amusement in his voice, a half-ironical tone which had been familiar to us in the old hospital days.  He raised himself on one arm and gazed at the water all round.  Then he was silent for some minutes.  At last he spoke again.  “Do you know what I ought to do if I were consistent?” he asked, with a tinge of pathos in his words.  “Jump off this raft, and deprive you of your last chance of triumph—­the triumph which you have worked for so hard.  You want to save my life for your own ends, not for mine.  Why should I help you to my own undoing?”

Hilda’s voice was tenderer and softer than usual as she answered:  “No, not for my own ends alone, and not for your undoing, but to give you one last chance of unburdening your conscience.  Some men are too small to be capable of remorse; their little souls have no room for such a feeling.  You are great enough to feel it and to try to crush it down.  But you cannot crush it down; it