rags,
and she herself was utterly beyond control.

As she drew nearer, the terror-stricken faces of those on board
could be plainly seen, clinging to each other or to the masts,
praying, gesticulating, or too frightened to do anything but gaze with
fixed and ghastly eyes at the awful fate awaiting them.

Standing near the wheel was a man who, even at such a time, seemed to hold
himself apart from the rest. He was of gigantic size, towering above the
heads of the rest of them. He had stripped himself of his clothing, and
was evidently awaiting a suitable moment to plunge off the vessel into the
boiling ocean, and fight his hand-to-hand battle with death. At last the
right moment came. Without an instant's hesitation he plunged over the
side into the raging waters. Then rising again, in a moment or two, to
the surface, like a perfect Hercules, he fought his way through the
billows, his strong arm and massive chest defying their power. On, on he
went, now riding on the top of a huge boiling mountain of water, now down
in the hollow, with the raging sea rising above him, so that it seemed he
must be swallowed and crushed in their embrace.

Long the struggle continued, and the excitement on shore grew intense,
for no one thought it possible that he could reach the land alive.
But, after a terrible fight which would have exhausted anyone not endowed
with supernatural powers, his bravery was rewarded, and with one
tremendous leap he landed safely on the shore, well beyond the deadly
clutch of the waves.

All the people of the country-side seemed now to have gathered to witness
the marvellous combat, men and women, on horse and on foot, wreckers,
fishermen, and what not,--and into the midst of them all rushed the
dripping stranger. Apparently not in the least exhausted, he snatched the
scarlet cloak off the shoulders of an old woman, and wrapping it about
himself, as suddenly sprang up behind a young woman, who was sitting on
her horse watching the wreck, and urging the animal on to a furious
gallop, rode off in the direction of the young woman's home. The people
shouted and screamed, for they thought the poor girl was being carried
off, no one knew where, by the Evil One himself; but the strange cries,
which they took to be the language of the Lower Regions, were only a
foreign tongue, and the horse made for its own stable by instinct.

When Miss Dinah Hamlyn and her reeking steed dashed into the courtyard of
her