the
whole moon-lit fabric came into view, wafted along by the faint westerly
air, not half a mile away.

He sprang to the fire, forgetting his pain, and throwing on wood, made a
blaze. He hailed, in a frenzy of excitement: "Bark ahoy! Bark ahoy! Take
us off," and a deep-toned answer came across the water.

"Wake up, Myra," he cried, as he lifted the child; "wake up. We're going
away."

"We goin' to mamma?" she asked, with no symptoms of crying.

"Yes, we're going to mamma, now--that is," he added to himself; "if that
clause in the prayer is considered."

Fifteen minutes later as he watched the approach of a white
quarter-boat, he muttered: "That bark was there--half a mile back in
this wind--before I thought of praying. Is that prayer answered? Is she
safe?"

CHAPTER X

On the first floor of the London Royal Exchange is a large apartment
studded with desks, around and between which surges a hurrying, shouting
crowd of brokers, clerks, and messengers. Fringing this apartment are
doors and hallways leading to adjacent rooms and offices, and scattered
through it are bulletin-boards, on which are daily written in duplicate
the marine casualties of the world. At one end is a raised platform,
sacred to the presence of an important functionary. In the technical
language of the "City," the apartment is known as the "Room," and the
functionary, as the "Caller," whose business it is to call out in a
mighty sing-song voice the names of members wanted at the door, and the
bare particulars of bulletin news prior to its being chalked out for
reading.

It is the headquarters of Lloyds--the immense association of
underwriters, brokers, and shipping-men, which, beginning with the
customers at Edward Lloyd's coffee-house in the latter part of the
seventeenth century, has, retaining his name for a title, developed into
a corporation so well equipped, so splendidly organized and powerful,
that kings and ministers of state appeal to it at times for foreign
news.

Not a master or mate sails under the English flag but whose record, even
to forecastle fights, is tabulated at Lloyds for the inspection of
prospective employers. Not a ship is cast away on any inhabitable coast
of the world, during underwriters' business hours, but what that mighty
sing-song cry announces the event at Lloyds within thirty minutes.

One of the adjoining rooms is known as the Chart-room. Here can be found
in perfect order and sequence, each on its r