changed into a brig, the _Kestrel_ changed into the _Scheldt_, the
Kilgorman kitchen became a deck, and Miss Kit a Dutch skipper. Why was
it? Why should everything come back to that one brig in the offing?

Suddenly I understood it. There, as I looked up from my restless raft
and followed the gleam of the afternoon sun as it broke through the
clouds, I perceived just such another vision in the offing--a brig, with
canvas set, and the light glancing on her sails as she laboured over the
waves towards me!

She may have been a mile away. By the look of her she was a foreign
craft, and may have been a trader coasting between the Dutch ports.
Whatever she was, the sight of her put new life into me.

I took my red scarf--the very scarf I had waved so vainly at the
_Scheldt_ scarce three weeks ago--and spreading it wide waved it with
all the energy of which I was capable. How long the minutes seemed
then! If she gave me the go-by, my last chance would go with her. Even
as I raised myself to wave, my head reeled, and a dimness clouded my
eyes.

Then, with a wonderful bound at my heart, half surprise, half joy, I saw
the brig suddenly put about, while a flag waved at her stern showed that
my signal had been seen. A minute later the welcome sight of a boat
coming towards me assured me that I was saved, and with a cry of
thankfulness to Heaven my weary head drooped, and the mist in my eyes
became darkness.

What roused me was the consciousness of two strong arms round me, and
the taste of liquid fire between my lips. My saviours, who were
Dutchmen, had lifted me from the spar, and were plying me with spirits
as I lay more dead than alive in the stern-sheets. I looked up. The
sails of the brig, flapping against the wind, towered above me, and her
dark hull as she swung over us hid the sun. The boat pulled round her
stern to reach the lee-ladder. As we passed I glanced up, and my eyes
fell on two words, painted in gilt letters--

"_Scheldt_. Rotterdam."

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

THE HIGHWAYMAN ON THE DELFT ROAD.

The next thing I clearly remember was crawling up on deck, clad in a
Dutch sailor's jacket and cap (I had been stripped for action when I was
pitched into the waves out of the _Zebra_), and seeing a stretch of red-
tiled roofs and windmills and tall towers on the bank of the broad
stream up which we sailed on the tide. Rotterdam was in sight.

I had lain in a sort of stupor since I was carried on