boat toward him, and stepping on the poop-rail, he
jumped into the sea. But the gunner, judging accurately the swell of the
waves, brought the boat to the very spot where the captain had struck
the water and hoisted him on board. Without a word he made his way to
the stern and took the tiller.

The boat pulled away a score of strokes or so and then the men rested on
their oars. The sunset colors had faded utterly but a dim after-glow
remained, and overhead a young moon shone wanly through black wisps of
scudding cloud. The _Gull_ sank slowly by the bow.

"She's one of the last of the old-timers," said the captain sadly. "This
was her seventieth whaling season and that's old age for ship as well as
man. I wish, though----"

"What is it, Captain Murchison?" asked Colin.

"Ah, it's nothing, boy," was the reply. "Only we're foolish over things
we love, and the _Gull_ was all that I had left. It's a dark and lonely
death she's having there. I wish----"

"Yes, sir?" the boy whispered.

"I wish she'd had her lights," the captain said, and his hands were
trembling on the tiller, "it's hard to die in the dark."

For a moment Colin had a wild idea of leaping into the sea and swimming
to the sinking craft, and blamed himself bitterly for not having looked
after the port and starboard lights at sundown, as he often did when the
watch on deck was too busy to see to them. He would have given anything
to have done it, rather than to have to sit beside the captain with his
eyes fixed on the desolate unlighted ship! Boy though he was, he nearly
broke down.

"Good-by, _Gull_, good-by," he heard the captain whisper under his
breath.

Then, as if the ache in the boy's heart had been a flame to cross the
sea, it seemed that a tiny spark kindled upon the sinking ship, and the
captain, speechless for the moment, pointed at it.

"Is that a light, boy?" he said hoarsely, "or am I going mad?"

Like a flash, Colin remembered.

"It's the binnacle, sir," he cried; "I lighted it for the man at the
wheel myself."

Solemnly the captain took off his hat.

"It's where the light should be," he said at last, "to shine upon her
course to the very end."

CHAPTER II

THE FIGHT OF THE OLD BULL SEALS

The quick, uneasy pitching of the boat and a sudden dash of ice-cold
spray roused the captain from the fit of abstraction into which the
sinking of his ship had plunged him.

"Step the mast, men," he said; "we've got to make for th