Page:Ninety-three.djvu/57

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NINETY-THREE.
53

ness increased in size, the foam burst into jets of light, pale gleams floated over the tops of the waves. Day dawned.

The boat was out of the reach of the enemy; but the most difficult task was yet to be accomplished. The boat was saved from the cannon shots, but not from shipwreck. It was in a high sea, a mere shell, without deck, without sail, without compass, with nothing to rely on but oars, in the face of the ocean and the storm, an atom at the mercy of monsters.

Then in this boundlessness, in this solitude, lifting a face made pallid by the dawn, the man in the bow of the boat fixed his gaze on the man in the stern and said to him,—

"I am the brother of the one you ordered shot."