s of the night.

"Johnny, we'll never make the harbor: I can't see a light," Lavender
cried, "Hadn't we better try to keep her up the loch?"

"We _must_ make the harbor," his companion said: "she can't stand this
much longer."

Blinding torrents of rain were now being driven down by the force
of the wind, so that all around them nothing was visible but a wild
boiling and seething of clouds and waves. Eyre was up at the bow,
trying to catch some glimpse of the outlines of the coast or to make
out some light that would show them where the entrance to Tarbert
harbor lay. If only some lurid shaft of lightning would pierce the
gloom! for they knew that they were being driven headlong on an
iron-bound coast; and amid all the noise of the wind and the sea they
listened with a fear that had no words for the first roar of the waves
along the rocks.

Suddenly Lavender heard a shrill scream, almost like the cry that a
hare gives when it finds the dog's fangs in its neck, and at the same
moment, amid all the darkness of the night, a still blacker object
seemed to start out of the gloom right ahead of them. The boy had no
time to shout any warning beyond that cry of despair, for with a wild
crash the boat struck on the rocks, rose and struck again, and was
then dashed over by a heavy sea, both of its occupants being thrown
into the fierce swirls of foam that were dashing in and through the
rocky channels. Strangely enough, they were thrown together; and
Lavender, clinging to the sea-weed, instinctively laid hold of his
companion just as the latter appeared to be slipping into the gulf
beneath.

"Johnny," he cried, "hold on!--hold on to me--or we shall both go in a
minute."

But the lad had no life left in him, and lay like a log there, while
each wave that struck and rolled hissing and gurgling through the
channels between the rocks seemed to drag at him and seek to suck him
down into the darkness. With one despairing effort, Lavender struggled
to get him farther up on the slippery sea-weed, and succeeded. But his
success had lost him his own vantage-ground, and he knew that he was
going down into the swirling waters beneath, close by the broken boat
that was still being dashed about by the waves.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"HAME FAIN WOULD I BE."

Unexpected circumstances had detained Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter
in London long after everybody else had left, but at length they were
ready to start for their projected trip into