en. The tongue of the ship's bell had broken loose
somehow, and the wash of the sea made it toll with mournful cadence. It
rose clear and loud, even above the shrieking of the gale, and Harper
fitted its notes to his own words. "Never more," it seemed to say; and
then, as a heavier sea than usual swept over the wreck, shaking her down
to her very keel, "Never, never more."

And yet on shore the fire leaped and danced. Kindly anxious hands were
feeding it, and it was impossible not to think that the men who would
stay out on such a bitter night, were not doing all they knew for the
help and succour of these helpless men. There were rocket apparatus
stationed along the coast, and if the ship would only hold together long
enough, why should they not all be saved? If she only would. Ben Harper
was feverish in his desire for life now. He must live; he must see Susy
once again, he must--he must! And eagerly he watched for the dawn.

So long the night, so long, so long. Is it a truth that our hours of
gladness and our hours of pain are all of a length? Surely not. The
night wore on, and it seemed to those waiting men that the longed-for
morning would never come. But gradually the moon sank behind the dark
mass of the land to leeward, and in the east came the first faint
streaks of dawn.

A shout rose up from the weary waiting men, a shout Harper fancied he
heard echoed faintly from the shore. Then the day was born, stormy and
cold, and the light only showed them a handful of men clinging to a
wreck, which each sea threatened to break into a thousand pieces.

"Merciful God!" cried the skipper, as the daylight showed him the full
extent of his peril, "my poor wee wife!"

But if the daylight showed them their danger it showed them too that
those on shore had not been unmindful of them. The ugly cliffs, steep
and inaccessible, were not very high, and on the nearest point to the
wreck, not indeed one hundred yards away, a little knot of men were
getting ready the rocket apparatus. There were women there too, with
shawls thrown over their heads, and Harpers heart beat as he thought of
seeing his love again. Surely now--now that he came to her from the very
jaws of death--cast up out of the cruel sea--she would not reject him.
Would she not rather take it as a sign from her God that she was to wed
this man? Surely she would. In another few minutes he would be by her
side--a little longer and he might hold her in his arms again. H