ex-sortes_. Amid this unthrifty waste and hard by, off Berry
Head, the schooner _One-and-All_ foundered and went down, not prematurely.

Foreseeing the end, her master had given orders to lower the whale-boat.
The schooner might be apple-rotten, as her crew declared, but she carried
a whale-boat which had inspired confidence for years and induced many a
hesitating hand to sign articles; a seaworthy boat, to begin with, and by
her owner's and master's care made as nearly unsinkable as might be,
cork-fendered, fitted bow and stern with air tanks, well found in all her
gear. Woe betide the seaman who abstracted an inch of rope from her to
patch up the schooner's crazy rigging, or who left a life-belt lying loose
around the deck or a rowlock unrestored to its due place after the weekly
scrub-down!

The crew, then, launched the boat--half filling her in the process--and,
tumbling in, pulled for the lee of the high land between Berry Head and
Brixham. The master took the helm. He was steering without one backward
look at the abandoned ship, when the oarsmen ceased pulling, all together,
with a cry of dismay.

On the schooner's deck stood a child, waving his arms despairingly.

How he came there they could not tell, nor who he was. The master, not
understanding their outcry, cursed and shouted to them to pull on.
But already the starboard oars were holding water and the bowman bringing
her around head-to-sea.

"Good Lord deliver us!"

The master carried a pair of binoculars, slung in a leathern case about
his shoulders inside his oilskin coat.

They had been given to him by public subscription many years before, with
a purse of gold, as a reward for saving life at sea. Since then he had
forgotten in whisky-drinking and money-getting all the generous courage of
his youth. His business for many years had been to play with human life
for his own and his owner's profit, with no care but to keep on the right
side of the law. The noble impulse which had earned him this testimonial
was dead within him; to recover it he must have been born again.
He might even, by keeping his pumps going and facing out the peril for
another couple of hours, have run the _One-and-All_ into Torbay and saved
her; but he had not wanted to save her. Nevertheless, when he had run
down to collect his few treasures from the cabin, these binoculars were
his first and chiefest thought, for they attached him to something in his
base career which