ve gone up ter the
buryin'-place ter look at it. An' now the lad himself be gone," said
Dirk, wiping his eyes and snuffling.

"Ay, it be a heavy night!" moaned the women, wiping their eyes with
the corners of their aprons.

A great heap of bales and boxes and bits of the "Gull's" timbers was
accumulating on the sand by the fire. The women sat down on them,
keeping up their low talk and whispers, and watching the two silent
figures the other side of the fire. The man moved not a muscle. The
old negress bent over him, stroking his forehead and whispering and
crooning. Only once he had said, chokingly, "My Noll!--all that was
left to me," and now lay passive and unheeding, overwhelmed and
crushed by the sense of his loss and the consciousness that the sea
had quenched the brave, bright life forever.

CHAPTER XXIII.

WAITING.

The long, long, weary night gave way to a gray and gloomy dawn. The
tempest had not abated, and the sea thundered as furiously as ever.
The wet and shivering women had gone back to their houses and their
little ones; and as the cold, steely light of the coming day began
to whiten in the east, Hagar made her way back to her kitchen,
where she kindled a fire to warm her numb limbs. Never more, she
thought,--rocking to and fro before the pleasant blaze,--could the old
house be bright or cheerful. The sea had quenched its life and its
joy, and never again would the merry voice echo in the great rooms, or
the quick, eager steps sound along the hall and in at her
kitchen-door.

"O good, bressed Lord!" moaned she, "bress yer poor chil'en dat's lef'
behind! 'Pears like dey was jes' ready ter fall down an' faint ter def
ef ye didn't hold 'em up. O Lord, keep Hagar up, an' 'vent her from
'strustin' ye! Bress us, Lord, fur we ain't nuffin dis yer time. Ye's
all we hab ter hold on ter."

Meanwhile, Trafford and the fishermen lingered on the shore, waiting
for the sea to give up its dead. The east grew whiter, and light
broke dimly over the waste of waves, and faintly showed them where the
"Gull" had struck. There was not much left of the little craft,--only
a few timbers and the taper point of a mast, wedged in between some
outlying rocks, which the sea thundered over. It was a dreary
sight,--the vast, immeasurable waste lashed into foam, and dimly
discerned through the gray gleaming of the dawn, with the bit of wreck
swaying in the wares, where those lives had gone out in the awful
t