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mass of dark and waving hair. She was very beautiful. I had never looked upon
such perfect features, such a divine molding which was at the same time human-
-intensely human. It was a face filled with character and strength and
femininity--the face of one who was created to love and to be loved. The cheeks
were flushed to the hue of life and health and vitality, and yet she lay there upon
the bosom of the sea, dead. I felt something rise in my throat as I looked down
upon that radiant vision, and I swore that I should live to avenge her murder.
And then I let my eyes drop once more to the face upon the water, and what I saw
nearly tumbled me backward into the sea, for the eyes in the dead face had
opened; the lips had parted; and one hand was raised toward me in a mute
appeal for succor. She lived! She was not dead! I leaned over the boat's side and
drew her quickly in to the comparative safety which God had given me. I removed
her life-belt and my soggy coat and made a pillow for her head. I chafed her
hands and arms and feet. I worked over her for an hour, and at last I was
rewarded by a deep sigh, and again those great eyes opened and looked into
mine.
At that I was all embarrassment. I have never been a ladies' man; at Leland-
Stanford I was the butt of the class because of my hopeless imbecility in the
presence of a pretty girl; but the men liked me, nevertheless. I was rubbing one
of her hands when she opened her eyes, and I dropped it as though it were a red-
hot rivet. Those eyes took me in slowly from head to foot; then they wandered
slowly around the horizon marked by the rising and falling gunwales of the
lifeboat. They looked at Nobs and softened, and then came back to me filled with
questioning.
"I--I--" I stammered, moving away and stumbling over the next thwart. The vision
smiled wanly.
"Aye-aye, sir!" she replied faintly, and again her lips drooped, and her long lashes
swept the firm, fair texture of her skin.
"I hope that you are feeling better," I finally managed to say.
"Do you know," she said after a moment of silence, "I have been awake for a long
time! But I did not dare open my eyes. I thought I must be dead, and I was afraid
to look, for fear that I should see nothing but blackness about me. I am afraid to
die! Tell me what happened after the ship went down. I remember all that
happened before--oh, but I wish that I might forget it!" A sob broke her voice.
"The beasts!" she went on after a moment. "And to think that I was to have
married one of them--a lieutenant in the German navy."
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