"No," said Lestrange, gazing at the forms that had just ceased to breathe, "they are dead."
The whaleboat and the dinghy hung together, gunnels grinding as they lifted to the swell. Two cable lengths away lay the schooner from which the whaleboat had come; beyond and around, from skyline to skyline, the blue Pacific, desolate beneath the day.
"They are dead."
He was gazing at the forms in the dinghy, the form of a girl with a child embraced in one arm, and a youth. Clasping one another, they seemed asleep.
From where they had drifted, to where they were drifting, God and the sea alone could tell.
A great gull, far above, wheeling and slanting on the breeze, had followed the dinghy for hours, held away by the knowledge, born of instinct, that one of the castaways was still alive. But it still hung, waiting.
"The child is not dead," said Stanistreet. He had reached forward, and, gently separating the forms, had taken the child from the mother's arms. It was warm; it moved; and as he handed it to the steersman, Lestrange, almost upsetting the boat, stood up. He had glimpsed the faces of the dead people. Clasping his head with both hands and staring at the forms before him, mad, distracted by the blow that Fate had suddenly dealt him, his voice rang out across the sea: