w then, look alive, my hearties!" they shouted, as they hooked on;
and the admonition was scarcely needed.

Salve carried his almost unconscious wife down to the side, where they
took her and laid her aft in the bottom of the boat; but she sat up with
outstretched arms until her child had been passed to her from hand to
hand, and was safe in them again, and then she watched anxiously for
Salve to come too. He sprang down into the boat the last, and then she
fainted.

They put off, and stood in now on the crests of the waves straight for
the beach, where a score of men in sea-boots and woollen jackets made a
chain down into the water by holding each other's hands, and drew the
boat ashore.

They heard congratulations all round; and the man who had held the
tiller exclaimed, as Salve silently grasped his hand--

"It was resolutely done, Northman, to steer like that--only that you
did, you'd have passed the night upon the bank."

The invitation of their rescuers to partake of such hospitality as they
could offer was gladly accepted by the famished party from the wreck;
and they followed the steersman, Ib Mathisen, and his comrades in among
the downs, where the wind was no longer felt. It was some miles to the
fishing village; and they trudged on after it grew dark in silence,
being too exhausted, and too dejected, to talk, their guides only
keeping up a low conversation among themselves. Salve carried the child,
sheltering it from the pricking sand that blew in their faces when they
came out upon the flat downs farther on, and supporting Elizabeth at the
same time.

At last they saw the lights of a group of cottages. The largest of these
belonged to Ib Mathisen; and into this Salve and his wife were
conducted, while the crew were distributed among the others.

Ib's wife, a robust-looking woman of fifty or thereabouts, with a bold,
straightforward expression in her tanned countenance, was standing over
by the fire with her sleeves tucked up baking, when they came in. She
examined the incomers steadily for a moment without raising herself from
her stooping position; but at the sight of Elizabeth and the child she
exclaimed in a tone of compassion that was better than any more formal
welcome, "The poor woman and her child have been cast ashore, Ib?" and
set about caring for their wants at once, her grown-up daughter helping
her to draw a bench to the fire for them, and putting a kettle on to
make something warm for th