his own depression. His hand sought her own, where it gripped for
support, and closed over it warmly.

"It cannot be as bad as it seems," he insisted, trying to say the words
cheerfully. "I know these waters, and they are never long deserted. Luck
will change surely; perhaps within the hour we shall be picked up, and
can laugh at all this experience."

She lifted her head, and their eyes met frankly.

"I am not afraid," she protested. "Not physically, at least. Truly I have
not felt fear since you joined me, Captain West. Before that I was alone,
and was frightened because I could not in the least understand why I was
being held a prisoner, or what my fate was to be. Now all I must meet is
the danger of the sea, with you to share the peril with me."

"But you are very tired?"

"Perhaps so, yet I have not thought about that. There are other things;
you do not believe in me."

"Why say that?" he asked, in astonishment. "There is no question of the
kind between us now."

"Truly, is there not? There has been, however; I know from the way you
spoke. What was it you believed of me--that--that I was part of this
conspiracy?"

"I do not know what I believed, if I actually believed anything, Miss
Natalie," he explained rather lamely. "I cannot make the situation
altogether clear even to myself. You see I kept meeting and talking with
you--or I thought I did--and yet never found you to be the same. I was
all at sea, unable to get anything straight. One moment I was convinced
of your innocence; the next something occurred to make you appear guilty,
a co-conspirator with Jim Hobart. Under the circumstances, you cannot
condemn me justly."

"Condemn! I do not. How could I? You must have kept faith in me
nevertheless, or you would never be here now. That is what seems
marvellous to me--that you actually cared enough to believe."

"I realize now that I have," he said gravely. "Through it all I have kept
a very large measure of faith in you."

"Why should that faith have survived?" she questioned persistently, as
though doubt would not wholly leave her mind, "we had no time to really
know each other; only a few hours at the most, and even then you must
have deemed me a strange girl to ask of you what I did. Surely there was
never a madder story told than the one I told you, and I couldn't have
proven an item of it."

"Yet it has shown itself true," he interrupted.

"You actually believe then that there is another woman-