ry trousers. It was a provocative pattern, but the Commandant
heeded it not....

He looked up from Sergeant Archelaus' knees to Sergeant Archelaus'
face, and past it to the face of Sergeant Treacher, now a little more
distinct. The two men had been pulling for an hour, and the Commandant
saw that they were tired--tired and very old. He recognised it at first
with a touch of anger. He felt an instant's impulse to curse and bid
them row harder. But on the instant came gentle understanding, and
restrained him.

"Archelaus," he said, "you are the older; take the tiller here and give
me the oar for a spell."

Archelaus was not unwilling. Besides, was it not his commanding officer
who gave the order? He relinquished his paddle with a grunt of
exhaustion, and the Commandant stood up to take it, laying both hands
on it while Archelaus stumbled past to the stern-sheets.... And at that
moment a miracle befell.

The fog must have been thinning. The Commandant, standing with both
hands on the paddle and his face to the bows, saw or felt it part
suddenly, and through the parting lights shone and voices sounded, with
the heavy throb of a vessel's screw.

Clank! clank! and it was on them, almost before Sergeant Archelaus
could let out a cry--the stem, the grey-painted bows of a vast
steamship, ghostly, towering up into night. A bell rang. High on the
bridge--but the bridge soared into heaven--a pilot's voice called out
in the Island tongue. As the great bows glided by, missing the boat by
a few yards, the three men stared aloft until they had almost cricked
their necks; and aloft there, as Archelaus raised his lantern, the
Commandant read the vessel's name--"Milo"--glimmering in tall gilt
letters.

Faces looked down from her rail, faces from the shadow of the
hurricane' deck; a line of faces and all looking down upon the little
Island tug that had fallen alongside and drifted close under the
liner's flank, a short way abaft her red port-light. A murmur of talk
went with the faces, as it were a stream rippling by, and mingled with
the splash of water pouring over-side from the pumps. It sounded
cheerfully, and from the voices on board the tug and in the lifeboat
and galley towing astern our Commandant gathered that the danger was
over. Again Sergeant Treacher hailed and flung a rope; this time the
lifeboat's crew caught it and made fast.

"Reub Hicks is aboard," said a voice, naming one of the St. Ann's
pilots. "He picked her