f the
boat, and shot up sharply. In the darkness and confusion no one saw the
act. The convict disappeared, but his half-articulate curses followed.

"The fellow's let go," muttered Lord Ronsdale with a shiver.

At the steering oar the chief mate, hearing the cries of the man, cast a
swift glance over his shoulder and hesitated. To bring the boat,
half-filled with water, around now, meant inevitable disaster; one
experiment of the sort had well-nigh ended in their all being drowned.
He knew he was personally responsible for the lives in his charge; and
with but an instant in which to decide, he declined to repeat the risk.

"He's probably gone by this time, anyhow," he told himself, and drove
on.

The convict, however, was not yet quite "gone"; as the boat receded
rapidly from view, becoming smaller and smaller, he continued
mechanically to use his arms. But he had as little heart as little
strength to go on with the uneven contest.

"He's done me! done me!" he repeated to himself. "And I ain't never
goin' to git a chance to fix him," he thought, and looked despairingly
at the sky. The dark rushing clouds looked like black demons; the stars
they uncovered were bright gleaming dagger points. "Ain't never!--the
slob!" And with a flood of almost sobbing invective he let himself go.

But as the waters closed over him and he sank, his hand, reaching
blindly out to grip in imagination the foe, touched something
round--like a serpent, or an eel. His fingers closed about it--it proved
to be a line; he drew himself along, and to his surprise found himself
again on the surface, and near a great fragment of wreckage. This he
might have discovered earlier, but for the anger and hatred that had
blinded him to all save the realization of his inability to wreak
vengeance. Now, though he managed to reach the edge of the swaying mass
from which the line dangled, he was too weak to draw himself up on the
floating timbers. But he did pass a loop beneath his arms, and, thus
sustained, he waited for his strength to return. Finally, his mind in a
daze, the convict clambered, after repeated efforts, upon the wreckage,
fastened the line about him again, and, falling into a saucer-like
hollow, he sank into unconsciousness.

The night wore on; he did not move. The sea began to subside; still he
lay as if dead. Dawn's rosy lips kissed away the black shadows, touched
tenderly the waves' tops, and at length the man stirred. He tried to sit