the dash of a wave took her breath;
the boat lurched aslant, belaboured by wave on wave, too suddenly headed
for the open sea. The tiller broke from his nerveless hands, and like a
log he fell.

Rhoda's memory held after no record of what her body did then, till she
had Christian's head on her knee. Had she mastered the great peril of the
sail? had she fastened the rudder for drifting, and baled? she whose
knowledge and strength were so scanty? Her hands assured her of what her
mind could not: they were chafed by their frantic hurry over cordage.

She felt that Christian lived; yet nothing could she do for him, but
hold him in her arms, giving her body for a pillow, till so they should
presently go down together, and both be safely dead.

The buoy-bells jangled to windward, to leeward. Then spoke the blessed
voices of the three Saints, and a light showed, a single murky star in a
great cave of blackness, that leaned across the zenith to close round the
pallid west. Ah, not here, not here in the evil place! She had rather
they drown in the open.

The weak, desolate girl was yet clinging desperately to the barest chance
of life. She laid her burden down; with awkward, aching hands she
ventured to get out a corner of sail; and she tried to steer, but it was
only by mercy of a flaw of wind that she held off and went blindly
reeling away from the fatal surf. As night came on fully the light and
the voice of the House Monitory passed away, and the buoy-bells, and the
roar of breakers, and the heavy black of the coast. Past the Land's End
in the free currents of open sea, she let the boat drive.

Crouching down again, she took up the dear weight to give what shelter
she could, and to gain for herself some, for great blasts drove hard,
and furious gusts of rain came scourging. Through the great loneliness of
the dark they went, helpless, driving on to the heart of the night, the
strength of the waves still mounting, and the fierceness of the wind; the
long gathering storm, still half restrained, to outleap in full hurricane
about the time of midnight.

CHAPTER IX

All night Lois and Giles were praying in anguish of grief for their
children of adoption, even when hope was beaten out by the heavy-handed
storm. For three days and nights the seas were sailless, though the hulks
of two wrecks were spied drifting; and after, still they ran so high,
that a fifth day dawned before a lugger beat in aside her course on a