uggling bravely, if wearily, upward to meet a wave,
would stop half-way with a jerk and a sigh, the wave gouging along the
deck--breaking over the stern-board.

They could feel her going in the pilot-house. But she hung on to her
lines with the grip of death. Dan stood at his mate's side, his eyes
fixed straight ahead into the darkness. He had cast his die; he had
chosen his lot--now the toll was to be paid. He thought, too, of the
men who, without question, had taken their stand with him. He reached
out his left hand and placed it gently on his mate's shoulder.

"Good boy, old Mul," he said, in words which, however inadequate,
revealed all the heart of his meaning. And Mulhatton simply shifted
his feet and gazed ahead, his hard, light eyes as expressionless as
marble disks.

The dawn came filtering across the raven waters as the bloodless hand
of an old man quivers across a chess-board,--gray dawn, cold dawn, even
more merciless than the night, in that it heralded the rise of the sun
to smile over the evil wrought in the darker hours. Astern, the white
yacht alternately pierced the sky with her bow and sought the depths.

Suddenly a long, triumphant scream of a whistle rang across the dawn--a
roll of water parted a retiring wave. The big white yacht moved of her
own power. Again the whistle sounded, as though in joy that the vessel
had at last found herself. Once more. . . . She mounted the waves in
proud defiance. . . . The tow-lines slackened.

"Cast off, cast off!" megaphoned an officer, while two of his sailors
threw the ends of the cables into the sea. The deck-hand and fireman
started to bring them in, while Dan gave the signal for Crampton to go
ahead.

The tug started timidly forward and then hesitated and trembled. A
wave hit her, and she rocked like a cork. The jump had all gone out of
her. Another wave struck her and almost hove her down, and then
another wave snapped her back again, jerking out the funnel, which
hissed overside into the sea. Half on her side, she clanked into the
trough. She struggled to right herself and had partly succeeded, when
a mighty wave smote her viciously on her listed side. She went over to
her beam ends and lay there a second, while Dan and his men shot
through the windows, off from the deck, into the sea. Another instant
and the _Fledgling_ rolled her keel to the morning light and swiftly
disappeared.

As Dan rose on a wave he saw her go, saw too, th