t to a new slime, never pausing but for a moment now and
then to try and understand what the men on deck were shouting to him.

Off the shore north of the Duglas is a rock called Ealan Dubh, or the
Black Island, a single bare and rounded block without a blade of grass
on it, that juts out of the sea in all weathers and tides and is grown
on thickly with little shell-fish. To-day it could not be seen, but the
situation of it was plain in the curling crest of the white waves that
bent constantly over it Straight for this rock the _Jean_ was driving
and a great pity came over Gilian, a pity for himself as he anticipated
the sickening crash upon the rock, the rip of the timber, the gurgle at
the holes, the sundering of the bolted planks, the collapse of the mast,
the ultimate horrible plunge. He was Black Duncan, the swimmer, fighting
hard for life between the ship and the shore; he was the girl, with wet
hair flapping blindly at the eyes, clinging with bleeding finger-nails
to the rough shells that clustered on the rock. It was horrible,
horrible! And then many tales from the shelves of Marget Maclean came
to his memory where one in such circumstances had done a brave thing. To
save the girl and bring her from the rock ashore--that was the thing
to be done--but how? Even the sea fairy, as he had said, might be worth
drowning for. Helplessly he looked up and down the shore. There was
nothing to see but the torn fringe of the tide, the waving branches of
the coast He had no more than grasped the solitude of the country-side
(feeling himself something of God's proxy thus to be watching the
destruction of the ship) when the _Jean_ went upon the rock. Her shock
upon it was not to be heard from the shore, and she did not break up
all at once as he had anticipated; she paused as it might seem, quite
willingly, in her career before the wind and slewed round a tarry
broadside to the crested wave. She began to settle in the water by her
riven quarter, but Gilian did not see that, for it came about slowly.
All he could see was that Black Duncan and his men upon the higher part
of the slanted deck were calling to him more loudly than before and
pointing with frenzied gestures back in the direction whence they had
come.

He looked back, he could not comprehend.

More loudly yet they called. They clustered, the three of them on the
shrouds, and in one voice tried to bellow down the gale.

He could not understand. He turned a pitiful