e same time. When the barge
and gig reached the ship, a line was thrown to each of them over the
quarter, which the bowman caught, and made fast to the ring.

"Where is the captain of the ship?" demanded Mr. Haven.

"Here," shouted that officer.

"How many have you aboard?"

"Eighteen!"

"You must slide down on a rope over the stern; we can't go alongside,"
continued the first lieutenant.

"Ay, ay, sir!" responded the captain of the ship. "I have two women and
two children on board."

"You must lower them in slings," added Haven, prompted by Mr. Fluxion.

[Illustration: THE WRECK OF THE SYLVIA. page 254.]

The people on board the wreck went to work, and one of the women was
lowered into each boat at the same time. A long loop was made in the end
of the rope, and the woman sat down in the bight of it, holding on to
the line with her hands. At a moment when the sea favored the movement,
the boats were hauled up close to the ship's stern, the passenger caught
by two of the crew, and hauled on board. A boy and a girl were let down
in the same manner. The captain, mates, and seamen came down the rope
hand over hand.

Each boat now had nine passengers, who were stowed in the stern sheets
and on the bottom. The ropes from the ship were cast off, and the
oarsmen were ordered to give way. The barge and the gig rose and fell,
now leaping up on the huge billows, and then plunging down deep into the
trough of the sea; but they had been well trimmed, and though the comb
of the sea occasionally broke into them, drenching the boys with spray,
the return to the Young America was safely effected.

"How happens it that you are all boys?" asked the captain of the wrecked
ship, who was in Paul Kendall's boat.

"That's the Academy Ship," replied the second lieutenant.

"The what?" exclaimed the captain.

"It is the Young America. She is a school ship."

"O, ay!"

There was no disposition to talk much in the boats. The officers and
crews were fully employed in keeping the barge and gig right side up in
the tremendous sea, and though all hands were filled with curiosity to
know the particulars of the wreck, all questions were wisely deferred
until they were on the deck of the ship.

When the gig came up under the counter of the Young America, a line was
thrown down to the bowman who made it fast to the ring. The passengers
were then taken aboard in slings rigged on the spanker-boom, which was
swung over the lee quarter f