solvo te_," he murmured as he pitched forward dead upon the breast
of the dying.

And the woman tenderly covered them over.

[Illustration: _Absolvo te._]

X

The Giver of Life

"HE THAT EATETH OF THIS BREAD SHALL LIVE FOREVER"

X

The Giver of Life

Of the five specters in the boat three were without life. Those whose
faint breathing indicated that they had not yet reached the point of
death were too weak and indifferent to rid the boat of the bodies of the
others. Ever since the homeward-bound whaler had struck a derelict in a
gale of wind north of the Falklands and foundered, this little boat,
surviving the shipwreck as by a miracle, had drifted on.

For three weeks in vain they had scanned the horizon for a sail. Their
scanty supply of bread and water had been consumed in ten days.
Thereafter they had nothing. The baby had died first, next a man whose
arm had been broken by a falling spar in the disaster, and then the
ship's cabin boy. The survivors were a man and a woman. They were both
far gone. The woman was plainly dying. The man kept himself up by sheer
exercise of will.

Their drifting had been northward toward warmer seas. It was winter in
their home land and, though they knew it not, Christmas day. There the
tropic sun blazed overhead from an absolutely cloudless sky. There was
no vestige of breeze to stir the canvas of the solitary sail or ripple
the glassy surface of the smoothed out ocean. The boat lay still. Not
even the iron man at the helm could have lifted an oar. It had been dead
calm for days. Speech there was none except in the gravest necessity. To
talk connectedly was impossible.

After scanning the horizon for the thousandth time the man's burning
eyes sought those of the woman at his feet. He was astonished to find
them open. Her mouth was working, her parched lips strove to form words.
He dropped the tiller which his hand had grasped mechanically, and which
was useless since there was no way on the boat, and bent his head lower.
Some sudden recrudescence of strength which the dying sometimes receive
came to the woman.

"Death," she whispered. "Glad." She turned her head slightly and saw the
form of the child. "The Baby--and--I--together."

The man nodded. Tenderly he laid his hot wasted hand on the woman's
fevered brow.

"A priest," she said, looking up at him uncomprehendingly.

She was evidently going fast yet she knew what she wanted although she
was not c