om!" cries some one; "jump quick! for God's sake!"

And Reuben, with some strange, generous impulse, seizes upon Madam
Maverick, and, before she can rebel or resist, has dropped her over the
rail. The men grapple her and drag her in; but in the next moment the
little cockle of a boat is drifted yards away.

The few who are left--the boatswain among them--are toiling on the wet
deck to give a last signal from the little brass howitzer on the
forecastle. As the sharp crack breaks on the air,--a miniature sound in
that howl of the storm,--the red flash of the gun gives Reuben, as the
boat lurches toward the wreck again, a last glance of Madam
Maverick,--her hands clasped, her eyes lifted, and calm as ever. More
than ever too her face was like the face of Adele,--such as the face of
Adele must surely become, when years have sobered her and her buoyant
faith has ripened into calm. And from that momentary glance of the
serene countenance, and that flashing associated memory of Adele, a
subtile, mystic influence is born in him, by which he seems suddenly
transfused with the same trustful serenity which just now he gazed upon
with wonder. If indeed the poor lady is already lost,--he thinks it for
a moment,--her spirit has fanned and cheered him as it passed. Once
more, as if some mysterious hand had brought them to his reach, he
grapples with those lost lines of hope and trust which in that youthful
year of his exuberant emotional experience he had held and lost,--once
more, now, in hand,--once more he is elated with that wonderful sense of
a religious poise, that, it would seem, no doubts or terrors could
overbalance. Unconsciously kneeling on the wet deck, he is rapt into a
kind of ecstatic indifference to winds, to waves, to danger, to death.

The boom of a gun is heard to the northward. It must be from shore.
There are helpers at work, then. Some hope yet for this narrow tide of
life, which just seemed losing itself in some infinite flow beyond. Life
is, after all, so sweet! The boatswain forward labors desperately to
return an answering signal; but the spray, the slanted deck, the
overleaping waves, are too much for him. Darkness and storm and despair
rule again.

The wind, indeed, has fallen; the force of the gale is broken; but the
waves are making deeper and more desperate surges. The wreck, which had
remained fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the great
swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew upo