nder had a sound of
struggle, as if the giant of the skies were breaking his fetters.

At length the listeners heard a sullen roar more prolonged than the
tempest, and the wind was upon them. The little vessel shivered and flew
before it. It swept past the cove that the sailors had hoped to enter,
and bore down with terrible speed toward the rocky coast beyond. The
sails had been furled, but the wind and the water needed no aid. The
rain came, a blinding deluge; the forked bolts seemed to have set the
air on fire; the crash of the thunder and the roar of the wind and the
water all mingled together.

The company had scattered. Only a few had gone into the little cabin,
the rest preferring to take what small chance the freedom of the deck
might give them. With all conventionalities swept away, they were
themselves as their companions had never seen them before and never
would again. Some were crouched on the deck, with sobs and cries for
help; some knelt in silent prayer, and others sat with a stoicism of
bearing that their paleness and anxious eyes showed was superficial.

Elizabeth, with an unconquerable desire to meet death upon her feet,
stood clinging to the mast. She had thrust her arm through a rope about
it, and so could resist the wind which, as she stood, was somewhat
broken to her by the mast. Archdale, catching by one thing and another,
came toward her. Slipping one arm into the rope, he put the other about
her in a firm support.

She looked up at him. She remembered him as she had seen him during the
siege, imperturbable in a storm of shot. "You have faced death many
times before," she said.

"Never with you beside me. The dread of this is that I cannot save you."
And then, as he looked at her, all that he had come to understand, and
had meant to break to her so slowly, lest she should be startled away
from him, broke from him at once in impetuous speech. "But death with
you, Elizabeth," he cried, "is better to me than life without you. I
have known it for only a little time; I can't tell how long it has been
true. But, in face of death, you shall know it. Don't think me fickle.
You know better than any one else how I played out that game to the
bitter end,--no, the happy end,--for at this moment I would rather stand
here five minutes and speak out my heart to you, and feel that you love
me, and die in your love, Elizabeth, than spend a long life by Katie
Archdale's side. My darling, I am selfish. I woul