st his sword again and again through the port into that
close-packed, weltering mass, until at last the shipwrights backed away
the boat to escape the suction of the sinking lighter.

The vessel, with its doomed freight of a hundred and thirty human
lives, settled down slowly by the head, and the wailing and cursing
was suddenly silenced as the icy waters of the Loire eddied over it and
raced on.

Caught in the swirl of water, Leroy had been carried up against the deck
of the lighter. Instinctively he had clutched at a crossbeam. The water
raced over his head, and then, to his surprise, receded, beat up once or
twice as the lighter grounded, and finally settled on a level with his
shoulders.

He was quick to realize what had happened. The lighter had gone down by
the head on a shallow. Her stern remained slightly protruding, so that
in that part of her between the level of the water and the deck there
was a clear space of perhaps a foot or a foot and a half. Yet of the
hundred and thirty doomed wretches on board he was the only one who had
profited by this extraordinary chance.

Leroy hung on there; and thereafter for two hours, to use his own
expression, he floated upon corpses. A man of less vigorous mettle,
moral and physical, could never have withstood the ordeal of a two
hours' immersion in the ice-cold water of that December morning. Leroy
clung on, and hoped. I have said that he was tenacious of hope. And soon
after daybreak he was justified of his confidence in his luck. As the
first livid gleams of light began to suffuse the water in which he
floated, a creaking of rowlocks and a sound of voices reached his ears.
A boat was passing down the river.

Leroy shouted, and his voice rang hollow and sepulchral on the morning
stillness. The creak of oars ceased abruptly. He shouted again, and was
answered. The oars worked now at twice their former speed. The boat was
alongside. Blows of a grapnel tore at the planking of the deck until
there was a hole big enough to admit the passage of his body.

He looked through the faint mist which he had feared never to see again,
heaved himself up with what remained him of strength until his breast
was on a level with the deck, and beheld two men in a boat.

But, exhausted by the effort, his numbed limbs refused to support him.
He sank back, and went overhead, fearing now, indeed, that help had
arrived too late. But as he struggled to the surface the bight of a rope
smacke