ad
crowded in, the lives of all must have been sacrificed. As our boat
approached the vessel in its turn, we arranged that four of us should
get on board--two (I being one of them) to see to the safety of Mr.
Blanchard's daughter, and two to beat back the cowardly remnant of the
crew if they tried to crowd in first. The other three--the coxswain and
two oarsmen--were left in the boat to keep her from being crushed by the
ship. What the others saw when they first boarded _La Grace de Dieu_ I
don't know; what I saw was the woman whom I had lost, the woman
vilely stolen from me, lying in a swoon on the deck. We lowered her,
insensible, into the boat. The remnant of the crew--five in number--were
compelled by main force to follow her in an orderly manner, one by one,
and minute by minute, as the chance offered for safely taking them in. I
was the last who left; and, at the next roll of the ship toward us, the
empty length of the deck, without a living creature on it from stem to
stern, told the boat's crew that their work was done. With the louder
and louder howling of the fast-rising tempest to warn them, they rowed
for their lives back to the yacht.

"A succession of heavy squalls had brought round the course of the
new storm that was coming, from the south to the north; and the
sailing-master, watching his opportunity, had wore the yacht to be ready
for it. Before the last of our men had got on board again, it burst on
us with the fury of a hurricane. Our boat was swamped, but not a life
was lost. Once more we ran before it, due south, at the mercy of the
wind. I was on deck with the rest, watching the one rag of sail we could
venture to set, and waiting to supply its place with another, if it blew
out of the bolt-ropes, when the mate came close to me, and shouted in my
ear through the thunder of the storm: 'She has come to her senses in the
cabin, and has asked for her husband. Where is he?' Not a man on board
knew. The yacht was searched from one end to another without finding
him. The men were mustered in defiance of the weather--he was not among
them. The crews of the two boats were questioned. All the first crew
could say was that they had pulled away from the wreck when the rush
into their boat took place, and that they knew nothing of whom they let
in or whom they kept out. All the second crew could say was that they
had brought back to the yacht every living soul left by the first boat
on the deck of the timber-s