rds us, as if beseeching us to save him. It is
strange that we felt more eager to do so than we had been to save all
the poor beings who had just gone down before our eyes. The reason was
plain; in the first instance we knew that we could not help them; there
seemed a possibility that we might rescue the person now floating so
close to us. He was being cast by the sea nearer and nearer to us. We
got ropes ready at either end of the vessel to heave to him. Peter
fastened one round his own waist. "Take care, Peter," said I.

"He may not be able to seize a rope, father, as he drives by, and I may
have a chance of getting hold of him," he answered.

I couldn't deny him, but I trembled for my son's safety; still, when a
right thing is to be done, when life is to be saved, we must not be too
nice about calculating the loss we may suffer. Now we thought that the
stranger would be driven away from us, now again he was washed towards
the schooner; if our feelings of anxiety were intense, how much greater
must his have been? Now he appeared on the foaming summit of a sea far
above us, then he went sinking down deep into the gulf below. Truly
there seemed to be a power above guiding him. I can have no doubt there
was. Suddenly a sea drove him close to the schooner; I thought for a
moment that it would have actually washed him on board. "Hold on,"
cried Peter, springing into the foaming water; and before the drowning
man was carried away again he had grasped him by the shoulders, the man
still holding to the raft. Thus together they were towed alongside, and
Peter holding on to the man with a strength which I scarcely supposed he
possessed, they were hauled up on deck. The stranger immediately
fainted, and Peter was in a very little better condition for a short
time; however, he soon recovered. The stranger we took below, and by
rubbing his body with hot flannels, putting bags of sand made hot to his
feet and hands, and pouring a little weak brandy and water down his
throat, he at length, to our great satisfaction, came round. He
remained in bed all that day and the next, and I wouldn't let him say
anything, not even to tell us who he was, greatly to the disappointment
of my wife and daughters, who were naturally curious to know.

CHAPTER FIVE.

CHARLEY WHITE.

One thought the stranger was a cabin passenger--another, an officer of
the ship--another, a seaman; and Mary observed, that supposing he was a
steer