be?" cried I.

As I spoke I heard a voice, apparently aboard the yacht, hailing. I
pulled on my cap, turned up the collar of my coat, and ran on deck
expecting to find the yacht in the heart of a thickness of rain and fog
with some big shadow of a ship looming within biscuit-toss. It was
raining steadily, but the sea was not more shrouded than it had been at
any other hour of the day, saving perhaps that something of the
complexion of the evening, which was not far off, lay sombre in the wet
atmosphere. I ran to the side and saw at a distance of the length of
the steam yacht, my own hapless little dandy, the _Spitfire_! Her main
mast was wholly gone, yet I knew her at once. There she lay, looking
far more miserably wrecked than when I had left her, lifting and
falling forlornly upon the small swell, her poor little pump going,
plied, as I instantly perceived, by the boy, Bobby Allett.

I had sometimes thought of her as in harbour, and sometimes as at the
bottom of the sea, but never, somehow, as still washing about, helpless
and sodden, with a gushing scupper and a leaky bottom. Caudel, poor
old Caudel, stood at the rail shouting to Captain Verrion, who was
singing out to him from the bridge.

I rushed forward, bawling to Captain Verrion, "That's the _Spitfire_;
that's my yacht!" and then at the top of my voice I shouted across the
space of water between the two vessels, "Ho, Caudel! where are the rest
of you, Caudel? For God's sake launch your boat and come aboard!"

He stood staring at me, dropping his head first on one side, then on
the other, doubting the evidence of his sight, and reminding one of the
ghost in Hamlet: "It lifted up its head and did address itself to
motion as it would speak." Astonishment appeared to bereave him of
speech. For some moments he could do nothing but stare, then up went
both hands with a gesture that was eloquent of--"Well, I'm _blowed_!"

"Come aboard, Caudel! Come aboard!" I roared, for the little dandy
still had her dinghey and I did not wish to put Captain Verrion to the
trouble of fetching the two fellows.

With the motions and air of a man dumb-founded, or under the influence
of drink, Caudel addressed the lad, who dropped the pump handle, and
between them they launched the boat, smack-fashion. Caudel then sprang
into her with an oar and sculled across to us. He came floundering
over the side, and yet again stood staring at me as though discrediting
his senses.