ld rule that wrecked she must be. And I knew Ratsey would be there,
and Damen, Tewkesbury, and Laver, and like enough Parson Glennie, and
perhaps--and at that perhaps, my thoughts came back to where we were,
for I heard Elzevir speaking to me:

'Look,' he said, 'there's a light!'

'Twas but the faintest twinkle, or not even that; only something that
told there was a light behind drift and darkness. It grew clearer as we
looked at it, and again was lost in the mirk, and then Elzevir said,
'Maskew's Match!'

It was a long-forgotten name that came to me from so far off, down such
long alleys of the memory, that I had, as it were, to grope and grapple
with it to know what it should mean. Then it all came back, and I was a
boy again on the trawler, creeping shorewards in the light breeze of an
August night, and watching that friendly twinkle from the Manor woods
above the village. Had she not promised she would keep that lamp alight
to guide all sailors every night till I came back again; was she not
waiting still for me, was I not coming back to her now? But what a coming
back! No more a boy, not on an August night, but broken, branded convict
in the November gale! 'Twas well, indeed, there was between us that white
fringe of death, that she might never see what I had fallen to.

'Twas likely Elzevir had something of the same thoughts, for he spoke
again, forgetting perhaps that I was man now, and no longer boy, and
using a name he had not used for years. 'Johnnie,' he said, 'I am cold
and sore downhearted. In ten minutes we shall be in the surf. Go down to
the spirit locker, drink thyself, and bring me up a bottle here. We
shall both need a young man's strength, and I have not got it any more.'

I did as he bid me, and found the locker though the cabin was all awash,
and having drunk myself, took him the bottle back. 'Twas good Hollands
enough, being from the captain's own store, but nothing to the old Ararat
milk of the Why Not? Elzevir took a pull at it, and then flung the bottle
away. 'Tis sound liquor,' he laughed, '"and good for autumn chills", as
Ratsey would have said.'

We were very near the white fringe now, and the waves followed us higher
and more curling. Then there was a sickly wan glow that spread itself
through the watery air in front of us, and I knew that they were burning
a blue light on the beach. They would all be there waiting for us,
though we could not see them, and they did not know that there