thee and him ashore at Newport.'

'Oh, fool me not!' I cried out, chafing at his excuses; 'I am not
wandering now. 'Twas Elzevir that saved me in the surf last night. 'Twas
he that landed with me.'

There was a look of sad amaze that came on Ratsey's face when I said
that; a look that woke in me an awful surmise. 'What!' cried he, 'was
that Master Elzevir that dragged thee through the surf?'

'Ay, 'twas he landed with me, 'twas he landed with me,' I said; trying,
as it were, to make true by repeating that which I feared was not the
truth. There was a minute's silence, and then Ratsey spoke very softly:
'There was none landed with you; there was no soul saved from that ship
alive save you.'

His words fell, one by one, upon my ear as if they were drops of molten
lead. 'It is not true,' I cried; 'he pulled me up the beach himself, and
it was he that pushed me forward to the rope.'

'Ay, he saved thee, and then the under-tow got hold of him and swept him
down under the curl. I could not see his face, but might have known there
never was a man, save Elzevir, could fight the surf on Moonfleet beach
like that. Yet had we known 'twas he, we could have done no more, for
many risked their lives last night to save you both. We could have done
no more.' Then I gave a great groan for utter anguish, to think that he
had given up the safety he had won for himself, and laid down his life,
there on the beach, for me; to think that he had died on the threshold of
his home; that I should never get a kind look from him again, nor ever
hear his kindly voice.

It is wearisome to others to talk of deep grief, and beside that no
words, even of the wisest man, can ever set it forth, nor even if we were
able could our memory bear to tell it. So I shall not speak more of that
terrible blow, only to say that sorrow, so far from casting my body down,
as one might have expected, gave it strength, and I rose up from the
mattress where I had been lying. They tried to stop me, and even to hold
me back, but for all I was so weak, I pushed them aside and must needs
fling a blanket round me and away back to the beach.

The morning was breaking as I left the Why Not?, for 'twas in no other
place but that I lay, and the wind, though still high, had abated. There
were light clouds crossing the heaven very swiftly, and between them
patches of clear sky where the stars were growing paler before the dawn.
The stars were growing paler; but there was ano