er, 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 conscious that she craved the impossible. It would appear that
she had been a good churchwoman. The man could only stare. He was no
priest, only a rough sailor.

"A priest," said the woman more clearly. "I want--a priest--the
sacrament." By some nervous convulsive effort she lifted her arms up
toward him beseeching, appealing. There was another kind of agony in her
voice that had not been present when she had moaned for water in the
days before.

"The sacrament," she insisted, "I die."

The m

William Babington Maxwell (18661938) was a British novelist. He was a son of novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Though nearly 50 years old at the outbreak of the First World War, he was accepted as a lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers and served in France until 1917.

Cyrus Townsend Brady (December 20, 1861 January 24, 1920) was a journalist, historian and adventure writer. His most well-known work is Indian Fights and Fighters. He was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1883. He was also a deacon in the Episcopal church. His first wife was Clarissa Guthrie, who died in 1890. His second wife was Mary Barrett.

Rebecca Sophia Clarke (1833-1906), also known as Sophie May, was an American author of childrens fiction. Using her nieces and nephews as inspiration, she wrote realistic stories about children. She wrote 45 books between 1860 and 1903. The most popular being the Little Prudy books. She lived most of her life in her native town of Norridgewock, Maine, where she lived out her life with her sister, who was also a successful author.