nce. The next moment Allan's inveterate recklessness seized
on the grotesque side of the situation by main force. He seated himself
astride on the bulwark, and burst out boisterously into his loudest and
heartiest laugh.

"All my fault," he said; "but there's no help for it now. Here we are,
hard and fast in a trap of our own setting; and there goes the last of
the doctor's boat! Come out of the dark, Midwinter; I can't half see you
there, and I want to know what's to be done next."

Midwinter neither answered nor moved. Allan left the bulwark, and,
mounting the forecastle, looked down attentively at the waters of the
Sound.

"One thing is pretty certain," he said. "With the current on that side,
and the sunken rocks on this, we can't find our way out of the scrape
by swimming, at any rate. So much for the prospect at this end of the
wreck. Let's try how things look at the other. Rouse up, messmate!" he
called out, cheerfully, as he passed Midwinter. "Come and see what the
old tub of a timber-ship has got to show us astern." He sauntered on,
with his hands in his pockets, humming the chorus of a comic song.

His voice had produced no apparent effect on his friend; but, at the
light touch of his hand in passing, Midwinter started, and moved out
slowly from the shadow of the bulwark. "Come along!" cried Allan,
suspending his singing for a moment, and glancing back. Still, without a
word of answer, the other followed. Thrice he stopped before he reached
the stern end of the wreck: the first time, to throw aside his hat,
and push back his hair from his forehead and temples; the second time,
reeling, giddy, to hold for a moment by a ring-bolt close at hand; the
last time (though Allan was plainly visible a few yards ahead), to look
stealthily behind him, with the furtive scrutiny of a man who believes
that other footsteps are following him in the dark. "Not yet!" he
whispered to himself, with eyes that searched the empty air. "I shall
see him astern, with his hand on the lock of the cabin door."

The stern end of the wreck was clear of the ship-breakers' lumber,
accumulated in the other parts of the vessel. Here, the one object
that rose visible on the smooth surface of the deck was the low wooden
structure which held the cabin door and roofed in the cabin stairs. The
wheel-house had been removed, the binnacle had been removed, but
the cabin entrance, and all that had belonged to it, had been left
untouched. The scuttle