oney it seemed that he was being wantonly and brutally ignored.
With a pang he realized that his excitement and his effort had
accomplished but one thing. They had brought on the thirst! His throat
was parching. He had an impulse to break out into a volley of
hysterical curses against the retreating ship. But his self-respect
withheld him. Leaning over the bulwarks, he murmured to the great green
prowling shape of his submarine jailer:

"You're no worse than lots of men, you ain't, damn you!"

As if in answer to this equivocal compliment the shark sailed in to
within a little more than arm's length of the bulwark, and looked up at
Mahoney with cold, malignant eyes. Mahoney kicked at him hysterically,
then turned away and drenched himself where the little waves ran up
shallow over the slope of the deck. The cool of the water on his skin,
particularly on his throat and wrists, did actually, though slightly,
ease his thirst.

[Illustration: "ONLY THAT SHARP BLACK FIN, THAT PROWLED AND PROWLED,
KEPT ALWAYS IN SIGHT"]

The night fell windless and clear; and for a time, so black were the
shifting reflections on the swells, so confusing the phosphorescent
gleams that shot up through the waters, that Mahoney could no longer see
the stealthy prowling of the great black fin. Lashing himself to the
bulwark by the sleeves of his shirt, he snatched an hour or two of
troubled sleep. Once he woke with a shock of disappointment from a dream
that the bottom had fallen out of a jug of water which he was just
raising to his lips. Again he started up shouting, and struggling
fiercely with the bonds that held him safely to the bulwark. He had
dreamed that a glittering white steam-yacht was speeding close past his
refuge,--so close that he had to look up at her rail,--yet the people on
her deck most unaccountably failing to see him. From this waking he fell
back weak and hopeless, and it was some minutes before he could get his
nerves under their wonted cool control. He had no longer any desire for
sleep, so he devoted himself again to soaking his wrists in the water
and letting the lambent phosphorescence stream through his fingers.

At last the moon rose over the waste of sea. Across the shimmering
silver pathway of its light sailed a far-off ship, small and black.
Mahoney gazed at it with longing. An hour or two later another ship
crossed the radiant pathway. But none came near the wreck. Only that
sharp black fin, that prowled and p