hands aboard
looking for him or for his dead body at the starboard side of the
_Prophet Daniel_, he himself swam slowly away to the larboard. Now
partly under water, now floating on his back, he directed his course
towards a point of land about a mile away, whereon, as he had observed
before the dark had settled down, there stood an old wooden building
resembling a church, and a great brick house with tall, lean chimneys
at a little farther distance inland.

The intemperate cold of the water of those parts of America was so much
more excessive than Dunburne had been used to swim in that when he
dragged himself out upon the rocky, bowlder-strewn beach he lay for a
considerable time more dead than alive. His limbs appeared to possess
hardly any vitality, so benumbed were they by the icy chill that had
entered into the very marrow of his bones. Nor did he for a long while
recover from this excessive rigor; his limbs still continued at
intervals to twitch and shudder as with a convulsion, nor could he at
such times at all control their trembling. At last, however, with a
huge sigh, he aroused himself to some perception of his surroundings,
which he acknowledged were of as dispiriting a sort as he could well
have conceived of. His recovering senses were distracted by a ceaseless
watery din, for the breaking waves, rushing with a prodigious swiftness
from the harbor to the shore before the driving wind, fell with
uproarious crashing into white foam among the rocks. Above this watery
tumult spread the wet gloom of the night, full of the blackness and
pelting chill of a fine slanting rain.

Through this shroud of mist and gloom Dunburne at last distinguished a
faint light, blurred by the sheets of rain and darkness, and shining as
though from a considerable distance. Cheered by this nearer presence of
human life, our young gentleman presently gathered his benumbed powers
together, arose, and after a while began slowly and feebly to climb a
stony hill that lay between the rocky beach and that faint but
encouraging illumination.

So, sorely buffeted by the tempest, he at last reached the black,
square form of that structure from which the light shone. The building
he perceived to be a little wooden church of two stories in height. The
shutters of the lower story were tight fastened, as though bolted from
within. Those above were open, and from them issued the light that had
guided him in his approach from the beach. A tall fli