The Open Boat and Other Stories

respondent, agitatedly. "Don't ta

I was just thinking abou

rom the sea in the south, changed to full gold. On the northern horizon a new light appeared, a small bluish gleam

ended far under the rowing-seat until they touched the feet of the captain forward. Sometimes, despite the efforts of the tired oarsman, a wave came piling into the boat, an icy wave of the night,

to row until he lost the ability, and then arouse the

blinded him. And he rowed yet afterward. Then he touched a man in the bottom of th

sitting position. They exchanged places carefully, and the oiler, cuddling

the boat headed so that the tilt of the rollers would not capsize her, and to preserve her from filling when the crests rushed pas

e that the captain was awake, although this iron man seemed to be alwa

ed him. "Yes. Keep it about

lumsy cork contrivance could donate, and he seemed almost stove-like when a rower, whose

s arm was around the oiler's shoulders, and, with their fragmentary clothing and haggard

with a roar and a swash into the boat, and it was a wonder that it did not set the cook afloat in his life

Billie," said the co

," said the oiler, and lay

t thought that he was the one man afloat on all the oceans. The wind

ing trail of phosphorescence, like blue flame, was furrowed on

the correspondent breathed with t

de the boat, and might almost have been reached with an oar. The correspondent saw an enormous fin sp

eemed to be asleep. He looked at the babes of the sea. They certainly were asleep. So, b

rvals long or short, fled the long sparkling streak, and there was to be heard the whiroo of the dark fin. Th

h the same horror that it would if he had been a picnicker.

to awaken by chance and keep him company with it. But the captain hung motionless over th