Madonna Litta

placed the least value upon my own life. I never had so much reason for living, was my concluding thought; and after that, until I dozed, I contented myself with trying to pierce the darkness to where I knew Maud crouched low in the stern-sheets, watchful of the foaming sea and ready to call me on instant's notice. ¡CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. ¡¡¡¡THERE IS NO NEED OF GOING into an extended recital of our suffering in the small boat during the many days we were driven and drifted, here and there, willy-nilly, across the ocean. The high wind blew from the northwest for twenty-four hours, when it fell calm, and in the night sprang up from the southwest. This was dead in our teeth, but I took in the sea-anchor and set sail,
hauling a course on the wind that took us in a south-southeasterly direction. It was an even choice between this and the west-northwesterly course that the wind permitted; but the warm airs of the south fanned my desire for a warmer sea and swayed my decision. ¡¡¡¡In three hours- it was midnight, I well remember, and as dark as I had ever seen it on the sea- the wind, still blowing out of the southwest, rose furiously, and once again I was compelled to set the sea-anchor.