ponderating warmth and strength of a protecting presence,
the influence of a fuller vitality. He did not speak, but his touch must
in some measure have counteracted the dread that oppressed her. She
ceased trembling, but did not move.

The westering moon went to bury herself in banks of cloud; the wind
increasing piped and whistled in strident threatening through the
rigging; the ship vibrated to the concussive voice of the minute-gun. No
murmurs but those of wind and water were heard among the throng; they
drove forward in awful, pallid silence. Suddenly the shriek of one
voice, but from fourscore throats, rent the agonized quiet. A red light
was running along the deck, a tongue of flame lapping round the
forecastle, a spire shooting aloft. Marguerite hid her face in Mr.
Raleigh's arm; a great sob seemed to go up from all the people. The
captain's voice thundered through the tumult, and instantly the mates
sprang forward and the jib went crashing overboard. Mr. Raleigh tore his
eyes away from the fascination of this terror, and fixed them by chance
on two black specks that danced on the watery horizon. He gazed with
intense vision a moment. "The tugs!" he cried. The words thrilled with
hope in every dying heart; they no longer saw themselves the waiting
prey of pain and death, of flames and sea. Some few leaped into the boat
at the stern, lowered and cut it away; others dropped spontaneously into
file, and passed the dripping buckets of sea-water, to keep, if
possible, the flames in check. Mr. Raleigh and Marguerite crossed over
to Ursule.

The sight of her nurse, passive in despair, restored to the girl a
portion of her previous spirit. She knelt beside her, talking low and
rapidly, now and then laughing, and all the time communicating nerve
with her light, firm finger-touches. Except their quick and
unintelligible murmurs, and the plash and hiss of water, nothing else
broke the torturing hush of expectation. There was a half-hour of
breathless watch ere the steam-tugs were alongside. Already the place
was full of fervid torment, and they had climbed upon every point to
leave below the stings of the blistering deck. None waited on the order
of their going, but thronged and sprang precipitately. Ursule was at
once deposited in safety. The captain moved to conduct Marguerite
across, but she drew back and clung to Mr. Raleigh.

"_J'ai honte_," she said; "_je ne bougerai pas plus tot que vous._"

The breath of the fie