grieve, for if he did it was a
very glorious death, and I am prouder of him than I could have been
had he lived on like the others--who wished to beat you off with oars.
Whatever is, is by God's Will, and doubtless for the best. At the least,
you and your child will be restored to your husband, though it cost me
one who would have been--my husband."

That evening Benita came upon the deck and spoke with the other ladies
who were saved, learning every detail that she could gather. But to none
of the men, except to Mr. Thompson, would she say a single word, and
soon, seeing how the matter stood, they hid themselves away from her as
they had already done from Mrs. Jeffreys.

The _Castle_ had hung about the scene of the shipwreck for thirty hours,
and rescued one other boatload of survivors, also a stoker clinging to
a piece of wreckage. But with the shore she had been unable to
communicate, for the dreaded wind had risen, and the breakers were quite
impassable to any boat. To a passing steamer bound for Port Elizabeth,
however, she had reported the terrible disaster, which by now was known
all over the world, together with the names of those whom she had picked
up in the boats.

On the night of the day of Benita's interview with Mrs. Jeffreys, the
_Castle_ arrived off Durban and anchored, since she was too big a vessel
to cross the bar as it was in those days. At dawn the stewardess awoke
Benita from the uneasy sleep in which she lay, to tell her that an old
gentleman had come off in the tug and wished to see her; for fear of
exciting false hopes she was very careful to add that word "old." With
her help Benita dressed herself, and as the sun rose, flooding the
Berea, the Point, the white town and fair Natal beyond with light, she
went on to the deck, and there, leaning over the bulwark, saw a thin,
grey-bearded man of whom after all these years the aspect was still
familiar.

A curious thrill went through her as she looked at him leaning there
lost in thought. After all, he was her father, the man to whom she owed
her presence upon this bitter earth, this place of terrors and delights,
of devastation and hope supernal. Perhaps, too, he had been as much
sinned against as sinning. She stepped up to him and touched him on the
shoulder.

"Father," she said.

He turned round with all the quickness of a young man, for about him
there was a peculiar agility which his daughter had inherited. Like his
mind, his body was st