loat till we overhaul them. Why, I was picked up
myself once after I had been in the water for hours and the ship
searching for me all the time, when I had been washed overboard like
Davy."

The captain's sanguine anticipations, however, even if he really
believed in them, were baseless.

The _Sea Rover_ backed, and wore, and tacked again, sailing, within a
radius of a few miles, in every possible direction the wind would let
her, without finding any traces of the lost ones, or even coming across
the pieces of wreckage, which the sombre tint of the sea and sky
prevented their seeing; and then night came on, and they had to abandon
their quest, although they burnt blue lights and cruised about the same
spot for hours afterwards, in vain!

"Alas, dear captain, it is hopeless now!" exclaimed Mr Liston
mournfully, with the resignation of despair, drawing away his gaze from
the sea, and his head dropping on his breast in despondency.

He was standing almost alone on the deck, the majority of the passengers
having gone below--for the wind was cold and boisterous, and the crew
having retired forward to the forecastle excepting those on duty aft--a
tall, thin, pale man, whom the calamity seemed to have aged ten years in
that brief space of time, and bowed with care.

"Only a miracle could have saved them!" he said, as if speaking to
himself; and then, turning to the captain, he added, "I suppose you must
give them up now, and proceed with your voyage?"

"Yes, it is useless waiting any longer," said Captain Markham, sinking
his voice in sympathy with the other. "Poor fellows, I'm afraid they've
told the number of their mess long since! But if they are drowned, poor
Davy was lost while doing his duty as a gallant sailor; and your son, my
dear sir, lies in a hero's grave beneath the wave, for he sacrificed his
life in trying to save that of his friend. It is some slight
consolation, Mr Liston, to recollect that; and I don't think the
recording angel above will have forgotten to log it down, either!"

And, as the hardy sailor pointed upwards with a reverent air to where
one tiny twinkling star was peeping out from amidst the mass of fleeting
shadowy clouds that still obscured the heavens and shrouded the horizon
from view, he wiped away a tear from his eye with the back of his hairy
hand, bidding the quartermaster a moment or two afterwards, in a
strangely gruff tone quite unlike his usual mode of speech, to set the
shi