hed the Point, where the
dike took its beginning.

No sign of the little one; but he saw the marshes everywhere laid waste.
Then he turned round and sped back, thinking perhaps Jamie had wandered
in the other direction. Passing the now buried landing-place, he saw
with a curious distinctness, as if in a picture, that the boat was
turned bottom up, and glued to the side of the dike.

Suddenly he checked his speed with a violent effort, and threw himself
upon his face, clutching the short grasses of the dike. He had just
saved himself from falling into the sea. Had he had time to think, he
might not have tried to save himself, believing as he did that the child
who was his very life had perished. But the instinct of
self-preservation had asserted itself blindly, and just in time. Before
his feet the dike was washed away, and through the chasm the waves were
breaking furiously.

Meanwhile, what had become of Jamie?

The wind had made him drowsy, and before he had been many minutes curled
up in the tub, he was sound asleep.

When the dike gave way, some distance from Jamie's queer retreat, there
came suddenly a great rush of water among the tubs, and some were
straightway floated off. Then others a little heavier followed, one by
one; and, last of all, the heaviest, that containing Jamie and his
fortunes. The water rose rapidly, but back here there came no waves, and
the child slept as peacefully as if at home in his crib. Little the
Captain thought, when his eyes wandered over the floating tubs, that the
one nearest to him was freighted with his heart's treasure! And well it
was that Jamie did not hear his shouts and wake! Had he done so, he
would have at once sprung to his feet and been tipped out into the
flood.

By this time the great tide had reached its height. Soon it began to
recede, but slowly, for the storm kept the waters gathered, as it were,
into a heap at the head of the bay. All night the wind raged on,
wrecking the smacks and schooners along the coast, breaking down the
dikes in a hundred places, flooding all the marshes, and drowning many
cattle in the salt pastures. All night the Captain, hopeless and mute in
his agony of grief, lay clutching the grasses on the dike-top, not
noticing when at length the waves ceased to drench him with their spray.
All night, too, slept Jamie in his tub.

Right across the marsh the strange craft drifted before the wind, never
getting into the region where the waves