ible enough to the people of the
ship at every windward roll of the yacht, and I crouched beside her
with her arm linked in mine.

There was nothing to do but to wait. Some little trifle of property I
had below in the cabin, but nothing that I cared to burthen myself with
at such a time. All the money I had brought with me, bank-notes and
some gold, was in the pocket-book I carried. As for my sweetheart's
wardrobe, what she had with her, as you know, she wore, so that she
would be leaving nothing behind her. But never can I forget the
expression of her face, and the exclamations of horror and astonishment
which escaped her lips, when, on my seating her under the bulwark, she
sent a look at the yacht. The soaked, stained, mutilated appearance of
the little craft persuaded her she was sinking even as we sat together
gazing. At every plunge of the bows she would tremulously suck in her
breath and bite upon her under-lip with nervous twitchings of her
fingers, and a recoil of her whole figure against me.

"Oh, Herbert," she cried, "when shall we leave? We shall be drowned."

I answered her that there was no fear of that. "Though," said I, "but
for that ship heaving into sight and standing by us, our fate might
have been sealed before the close of the day."

"But how are we to get into the ship?" she cried, straining her eyes,
brilliant with emotion, at the vessel that hung, rolling stately, so
close by that I could distinguish the features of the crowds of people
who lined the rails staring at us.

I explained that the gale was slackening, that fair weather was at
hand, as one might tell by the gradual opening of the horizon, and the
clarification of the stuff that had been hanging in soot for hours and
hours low down over our splintered, withered-looking mast-head, and
that, in a short time, the sea would be sufficiently quiet to enable
the ship to lower one of the large white quarter-boats which were
hanging by davits inboards over the poop.

"The sea runs too high yet," said I, "not for a boat to live in, but to
take us off. She might be swamped, stove, sunk alongside of us; and
there is time, plenty of time, my darling. Whilst that ship keeps us
in view we are safe."

But though there might have been plenty of time, as I told her, the
passage of it was of a heart-subduing slowness. It was some half-hour
or so after our coming on deck, that Caudel, quitting the pump at which
he had been taking a spell,