nothing."

He could not send a message--not one. Why should he? They would never
understand. The fair-haired girl would never know how he had longed for
her this night.

Down, down went the buoy, and the waters swallowed it up. A great
wave--another--he had done with life, for the rotten rope had parted at
last!

But on shore there was great rejoicing, for they hauled the skipper up
out of the sea, bruised and hurt and half drowned, but still alive; and
the cry went round that he was the last man left aboard the Vanity.

Then the bo'sun put up his hands and squinted through them seaward.

"Jimini! there's the mizzen mast gone! Poor old girl!"

"An'," said another voice, the voice of the man who had left before the
skipper, "there was two men aboard when I left, an' one of 'em was the
second mate. Where is he?"

"Gone to ----," but a woman's bitter cry cut short the bo'sun's speech.

DICK STANESBY'S HUTKEEPER

"Hallo! Dick. You here! Why, I thought you were away up tea-planting in
Assam."

"And I thought you were comfortably settled down on the ancestral acres
by this time."

"No such luck. The ancient cousin is still very much to the fore. Has
taken to himself a new wife in fact, and a new lease of life along with
her. She has presented her doting husband with a very fine heir; and,
well, of course, after that little Willie was nowhere, and departed for
pastures new."

"Make your fortune, eh! Made it?"

"Of course. Money-making game riding tracks on Jinfalla! Made yours?"

"Money-making game riding tracks on Nilpe Nilpe."

The two men looked at each other, and laughed. In truth, neither looked
particularly representative of the rank and aristocracy of their native
land. The back blocks are very effectual levellers, and each saw in the
other a very ordinary bushman, riding a horse so poor, the wonder was
he was deemed worth mounting at all. Both were dusty and dirty, for the
drought held the land in iron grip, and the fierce north wind, driving
the dust in little whirls and columns before it, blew over plains bare
of grass and other vegetation as a beaten road.

Around them was the plain, hot and bare of any living creature, nothing
in sight save a low ridge bounding the eastern horizon, a ridge which
on closer inspection took the form of bluffs, in most places almost
inaccessible. Overhead was the deep blue sky, so blue it was almost
purple in its intensity, with not a cloud to break the monoto