As a matter of fact, the light never came near the castaways at all; and after half an hour's ineffectual search, which seemed to Felix a whole long lifetime, it returned slowly toward the steamer from which it came--and left those two alone on the dark Pacific.
"There wasn't a chance of picking 'em up," the captain said, with philosophic calm, as the men clambered on board again, and the Australasian got under way once more for the port of Honolulu.

"I knew there wasn't a chance; but in common humanity one was bound to make some show of trying to save 'em.

He was a brave fellow to go after her, though it was no good of course.

He couldn't even find her, at night, and with such a sea as that running." And even as he spoke, Felix Thurstan, rising once more on the crest of a much smaller billow--for somehow the waves were getting incredibly smaller as he drifted on to leeward--felt his heart sink within him as he observed to his dismay that the Australasian must be steaming ahead once more, by the movement of her lights, and that they two were indeed abandoned to their fate on the open surface of that vast and trackless ocean..