FOR TWO DAYS MAUD AND I ranged the sea and explored the beaches in search of the missing masts. But it was not till the third day that we found them, all of them, the shears included, and, of all perilous places, in the pounding surf of the grim southwestern promontory. And how we worked! At the dark end of the first day we returned, exhausted, to our little cove, towing the mainmast behind us. And we had been compelled to row, in a dead calm, virtually every inch of the way.

 Another day of heartbreaking and dangerous toil saw us in camp with the two topmasts to the good. The day following I was desperate, and I rafted together the foremast, the fore- and main-booms, and the fore- and main-gaffs. The wind was favorable, and I had thought to tow them back under sail; but the wind baffled, then died away, and our progress with the oars was a snail's pace. And it was such dispiriting effort! To throw one's whole strength and weight on the oars, and to feel the boat checked in its forward lunge by the heavy drag behind, was not exactly exhilarating.

 Night began to fall, and, to make matters worse, the wind sprang up ahead. Not only did all forward motion cease, but we began to drift back and out to sea. I struggled at the oars till I was played out. Poor Maud, whom I could never prevent from working to the limit of her strength, lay weakly back in the sternsheets. I could row no more. My bruised and swollen hands could no longer close on the oar-handles. My wrists and arms ached intolerably, and, though I had eaten heartily of a twelve-o'clock lunch, I had worked so hard that I was faint from hunger.

 I pulled in the oars and bent forward to the line which held the tow. But Maud's hand leapt out restrainingly to mine.

 'What are you going to do?' she asked in a strained, tense voice.

 'Cast it off,' I answered, slipping a turn of the rope.

 But her fingers closed on mine.

 'Please don't!' she begged.

 'It is useless,' I answered. 'Here is night and the wind blowing us off the land.'

 'But think, Humphrey. If we cannot sail away on the Ghost we may remain for years on the island- for life, even. If it has never been discovered all these years, it may never be discovered.'

 'You forget the boat we found on the beach,' I reminded her.

 'It was a seal-hunting boat,' she replied. 'And you know perfectly well that if the men had escaped they would have been back to make their fortunes from the rookery. You know they never escaped.'

 I remained silent, undecided.

 'Besides,' she added haltingly, 'it's your idea, and I want to you succeed.'

 Now I could harden my heart. As soon as she put it on a flattering personal basis, generosity compelled me to deny her.

 'Better years on the island than to die tonight or tomorrow or the next day in the open boat. We are not prepared to brave the sea. We have no food, no water, no blankets, nothing. Why, you'd not survive the night without blankets. I know how strong you are. You are shivering now.'

 'It is only nervousness,' she answered. 'I am afraid you will cast off the masts in spite of me. Oh, please, please, Humphrey, don't!' she burst out.

 And so it ended, with the phrase she knew had all power over me. We shivered miserably throughout the night. Now and I again I slept fitfully, but the pain of the cold always aroused me. How Maud could stand it was beyond me. I was too tired to thrash my arms about and warm myself, but I found strength time and again to chafe her hands and feet to restore the circulation. And still she pleaded with me not to cast off the masts. About three in the morning she was caught by a cold cramp, and after I had rubbed her out of that she became quite numb. I was frightened. I got out the oars and made her row, though she was so weak I thought she would faint at every stroke.

 Morning broke, and we looked long in the growing light for our island. At last it showed, small and black, on the horizon, fully fifteen miles away. I scanned the sea with my glasses. Far away in the southwest I could see a dark line on the water, which grew even as I looked at it.

 'Fair wind!' I cried in a husky voice I did not recognize as my own.

 Maud tried to reply, but could not speak. Her lips were blue with cold, and she was hollow-eyed; but oh, how bravely her brown eyes looked at me- how piteously brave!

 Again I fell to chafing her hands, and to moving her arms up and down and about until she could thrash them herself. Then I compelled her to stand up; and though she would have fallen had I not supported her, I forced her to walk back and forth the several steps between the thwart and the stern-sheets, and finally to spring up and down.

 'Oh, you brave, brave woman!' I said, when I saw the life coming back into her face. 'Did you know that you were brave?'

 'I never used to be,' she answered. 'I was never brave till I knew you. It is you who have made me brave.'

 'Nor I until I knew you,' I answered.

 She gave me a quick look, and again I caught that dancing, tremulous light and something more in her eyes. But it was only for the moment. Then she smiled.

 'It must have been the conditions,' she said; but I knew she was wrong, and I wondered if she likewise knew.

 Then the wind came, fair and fresh, and the boat was soon laboring through a heavy sea toward the island. At half-past three in the afternoon we passed the southwestern promontory. Not only were we hungry, but we were now suffering from thirst. Our lips were dry and cracked, nor could we longer moisten them with our tongues. Then the wind slowly died down. By night it was dead calm, and I was toiling once more at the oars, but weakly, most weakly. At two in the morning the boat's bow touched the beach of our own inner cove, and I staggered out to make the painter fast. Maud could not stand, nor had I strength to carry her. I fell in the sand with her, and, when I had recovered, contented myself with putting my hands under her shoulders and dragging her up the beach to the but.

 The next day we did no work. In fact, we slept till three in the afternoon- or at least I did, for I awoke to find Maud cooking dinner. Her power of recuperation was wonderful. There was something tenacious about that lily-frail body of hers, a clutch on existence which one could not reconcile with its patent weakness.

 'You know I was traveling to Japan for my health,' she said, as we lingered at the fire after dinner and delighted in the movelessness of loafing. 'I was not very strong. I never was. The doctors recommended a sea voyage, and I chose the longest.'

 'You little knew what you were choosing,' I laughed.

 'But I shall be a different woman for the experience, as well as a stronger woman,' she answered, 'and, I hope, a better woman. At least I shall understand a great deal more of life.'

 Then, as the short day waned, we fell to discussing Wolf Larsen's blindness. It was inexplicable, and I instanced his statement that he intended to stay and die on Endeavor Island. There had been his terrific headaches, and we were agreed that it was some sort of brain breakdown, and that in his attacks he endured path beyond our comprehension.

 I noticed, as we talked over his condition, that Maud's sympathy went out to him more and more; yet I could not but love her for it, so sweetly womanly was it. Besides, there was no false sentiment about her feeling. She was agreed that the most rigorous treatment was necessary if we were to escape, though she recoiled at the suggestion that I might sometime be compelled to take his life to save my own- 'our own,' she put it.

 In the morning we had breakfast and were at work by daylight. I found a light kedge-anchor in the forehold, where such things were kept, and with a deal of exertion got it on deck and into the boat. With a long running-line coiled down in the stern, I rowed well out into our little cove and dropped the anchor into the water. There was no wind, the tide was high, and the schooner floated. Casting off the shorelines, I kedged her out by main strength (the windlass being broken), till she rode nearly up and down to the small anchor- too small to hold her in any breeze. So I lowered the big starboard anchor, giving plenty of slack; and by afternoon I was at work on the windlass.

 Three days I worked on that windlass. Least of all things was I a mechanic, and in that time I accomplished what an ordinary machinist would have done in as many hours. I had to learn my tools, to begin with, and every simple mechanical principle which such a man would have at his finger-ends I had likewise to learn. And at the end of three days I had a windlass which worked clumsily. It never gave the satisfaction the old windlass had given, but it worked and made my work possible.

 In half a day I got the two topmasts aboard and the shears rigged and guyed as before. And that night I slept on board, and on deck beside my work. Maud, who refused to stay alone ashore, slept in the forecastle. Wolf Larsen had sat about, listening to my repairing the windlass, and talking with Maud and me upon indifferent subjects. No reference was made on either side to the destruction of the shears............