, which
he thought of as riding furiously at her anchor, with the drunken
crew, and the old man with his sad and solemn face, who seemed so
different from his unruly followers, and yet was not ashamed to rule
over them and draw profit from their evil deeds. In spite of the ill
they had tried to do him, he felt a great pity for them in his heart;
but this was but for a moment, for sleep closed over him again, and
drew him down into forgetfulness.

When David woke in the morning, the gale had died away, but the sky
wept from low and ragged clouds, as if ashamed and sullen at the wrath
of the day before. Water trickled in the cracks of the rock; and when
David peered abroad, he looked into the thin drifting clouds. He had a
great content in his heart, but the awe and the strange peace of the
night had somehow diminished.

He began to reflect upon the light that he had seen from the sea. It
was not his lamp that had given out such light, for it was clear and
thin, while the light his own lamp gave was angry and red. Moreover,
when he had lighted the lamp before the storm, it was standing idle,
not in the window-place, but on the rock-shelf where he had set it.
Then he knew that some great and holy mystery had been wrought for him
that night, and that he had been very tenderly used.

Presently he descended the cliff, and went out upon the seaward side.
The waves still rose angrily under the grey sky, but were fast
abating. He saw in a moment that the shore was full of wreckage; there
were spars and timbers everywhere, and all the litter of a ship. Some
of the timbers were flung so high upon the rocks that he saw how great
the violence of the storm had been. He walked along, and in a minute
he came upon the body of a man lying on his face, strangely battered.

Then he saw another body, and yet another. He lifted them up, but
there was no sign of life in them; and he recognised with a great
sadness that they were the pirates who had dragged him from his home.
He had for a moment one evil thought in his mind, a kind of triumph in
his heart that God had saved him from his enemies, and delivered them
over to death; but he knew that it was a wicked thought, and thrust it
from him. At last at the end of the rocks he found the old captain
himself. There was a kind of majesty about him, even in death, as he
lay looking up at the sky, with one arm flung across his breast, and
the other arm outstretched beside him. Then he saw the