rushing
across the lightening firmament, and once the girl, stretching her arm
upward, exclaimed, as through a rift overhead she caught a glimpse of a
little star.

Half an hour--there came a great peace.

Now, a man and a woman out of the chaos--with the world and all its
civilization and its manners and its men and its affairs as though they
had never been, as though the two had lived for a flashing minute in
some old dream--the strain of years that makes for ceremony and
diffidence and convention and custom suddenly stopped, turned backward.

They were the first man and the first woman on the verge of upheaval,
having felt fear, not as we feel it, but in a dull, instinctive
way--wondering horribly. Just two, just a man and a woman, emerging
from all the destructive might of the world.

She--not Virginia Howland now--just She--turned toward the man who
crouched with one hand still clutching the wheel, the other lying
loosely, palm downward upon the deck. Her face was filled with the
glow of returning blood, her hair streamed, her eyes shone.

Gone, the tempest. The waves were lashing, surly, hissing a monotone
as old as Time is old. The darkness was the gloom of an age before the
sun was born. The air was filled with low sounds that had been dead
for aeons. And she turned to him, and he turned to her.

Her bosom was rising and falling; he could hear her quick, hard
breathing. As though without volition, she moved a step forward, and
with a low cry held out her arms to him, trembling no more, her heart
filled with a wild, joyous song. Suddenly she felt his breath upon her
face, felt herself crushed in his arms, as she would be crushed.
Gently he kissed her upon the lips, and then again and again and again.
For a moment she lay dumb in his arms, and then as he drew back his
head she put her arms around his neck and held his lips to hers. So
they stood.

A force far greater than the unharnessed might of the ocean now
thrilled and filled and exalted them. Slowly she raised her hands and
passed them over his face, lingeringly; once more she felt herself
drawn to him, and laughed joyously.

As Dan turned, out of the darkness ahead he saw a light. He looked
again. He saw it plainly now, that steady white disc with its red
sector.

"Cape Henry!" he cried. "Good God!"

The girl started.

"What?" she said, wonderingly.

"Cape Henry to port, Virginia. We'll have a tug in an hour. The dawn
is comi