again in his breast, and
with the hope a raging bitterness against the fate that was putting a
barrier once more between him and the attainment of those hopes. She
loved him, she had acknowledged that she loved him, and now to be free
to win her! The eagerness for life awoke in him again. Who said the
world was dreary? Who said life was not worth living? A bright,
fair world stretched enticingly before him, and he was dying. Yes,
dying--they were all dying, the old ship was breaking up fast, and if
succour did not come quickly--He drew a long breath and looked down
through the rain, that was falling in torrents now, at the decks below.
One moment all was hidden by the raging seas, the next by the faint
moonlight he saw the cracks widening--widening--then came another great
sea, and he felt the ship bump heavily on the rocks. No, it was the
poorest chance that she should last till morning, they--these men
hanging to the rigging--had no chance whatever of living in the sea that
boiled around them. Wider and wider grew the cracks on deck, the water
was pouring into the hold, and the cargo was being washed out of her.
One bale of wool--two--three--rose up on the next wave. A bale of wool!
What is a bale against a man's life? And yet the skipper was moaning
pitifully over their loss.

"My great Scott! eighteen hundred bales of wool gone! What will the
owners say? The poor old barkie! The poor old barkie! How shall I face
the owners?"

So! so! and his chances of facing those owners seemed so pitifully
small, and yet the old man's thoughts were full of it. Sometimes he
moaned over the wife and children in faraway England, but not as one
who gives up all hopes of seeing them again, only as one who maybe had
brought them to bitter poverty and pain by his mischance, for would the
owners give him another ship, now he had lost the old _Vanity?_ "Hardly
likely," he muttered to himself. "Hardly likely." And so the bitter
night wore on. There was nothing to mark the hours as they passed. Now
a man moaned a little, now another cried aloud that he could hold on no
longer, that he must fall and die before morning. Always there was the
sea, sweeping over the decks and halfway up the mast towards them, with
wearisome monotony. Great squalls of rain came up every now and then,
blotting out all else and making all round inky-black; then they passed,
and the pale and watery moon showed them the shore quite close, and the
raging waters betwe