up not twenty furlongs from Hell-deeps after she
had missed the Little Meadows by the skin of her teeth."

"How in the name of good Providence she got near enough to miss it,
being where she was, is the marvel to me," said another.

"She did, anyway," said the coxswain; "for Reub himself called down the
news to me in so many words."

The Commandant gazed up at the gray shadow reaching aloft into
darkness. He knew those outer reefs of which the men spoke. A touch of
them would have split the plates of this tall fabric like a house of
cards. He and Archelaus had witnessed one such wreck, eight years ago;
had waited in broad daylight, helpless, resting on their oars, unable
to approach within a cable's length of the rocks, upon which in ten
minutes a steel-built five-master, of 1,200 tons, had melted to nothing
before their eyes--"the rivets," as Archelaus put it, "flying out of
her like shirt buttons." But that had happened on one of the outermost
reefs, beyond the Off Islands, far down by the Monk Light. How the
_Milo_, no matter from what quarter approaching, had threaded her way
by the Hell-deeps was to him a mystery of mysteries. She was groping it
yet, her engines working dead slow; but the fog during the past hour
had sensibly lightened and Reub Hicks held open water between him and
the Roads, though he still kept the lead going. At the entrance of the
Roads he sent the tug forward to help the steerage, and so brought her
in and rounded her up as accurately as though she had been a little
schooner of two hundred tons.

As the great anchor dropped, and amid the deafening rattle of its chain
in the hawse-pipe, the crew astern cast off and drew their boats
alongside, eager to swarm aboard and hear news of the miracle. From his
galley Mr. Rogers shouted up to the captain to lower his ladder. He and
his chief boatman mounted first, with a little man named Pengelly, a
custom's official, who happened to make one of the lifeboat's crew--for
the _Milo_ had come from foreign, and thus a show was made of complying
with the Queen's regulations. But the whole crowd trooped up close at
their heels, and with the crowd clambered Sergeant Archelaus and
Sergeant Treacher.

The Commandant had given them permission. He would remain below, he
said, and look after the boat, awaiting their report.

The crowd passed up and dispersed itself about the deck, congratulating
all comers, and excitedly plying them with questions. The Islan