torm was wilder than ever, but a Portsmouth wherry is one of the
best boats ever built, and so it proved in this instance. Still I was
now in a situation most trying for a lad between fourteen and fifteen;
my teeth chattered with the cold, and I was drenched through and
through; the darkness was opaque, and I could see nothing but the white
foam of the waves, which curled and broke close to the gunwale of the
boat.

At one moment I despaired, and looked for immediate death; but my
buoyant spirit raised me up again, and I hoped. It would be daylight in
a few hours, and oh! how I looked and longed for daylight. I knew I
must keep the boat before the wind; I did so, but the seas were worse
than ever; they now continually broke into the boat, for the tide had
turned, which had increased the swell.

Again I left the helm and bailed out; I was cold and faint, and I felt
recovered with the exertion; I also tried to rouse the woman, but it was
useless. I felt for her bladder of liquor, and found it in her bosom,
more than half empty. I drank more freely, and my spirits and my
courage revived. After that, I ate, and steered the boat, awaiting the
coming daylight.

It came at last slowly--so slowly; but it did come, and I felt almost
happy. There is such a horror in darkness when added to danger; I felt
as if I could have worshipped the sun as it rose slowly, and with a
watery appearance, above the horizon. I looked around me: there was
something like land astern of us, such as I had seen pointed out as land
by Bob Cross, when off the coast of Portugal; and so it was--it was the
Isle of Wight: for the wind had changed when the rain came down, and I
had altered the course of the boat so that for the last four hours I had
been steering for the coast of France.

But, although I was cold and shivering, and worn out with watching, and
tired with holding the lines by which the wherry was steered, I felt
almost happy at the return of day. I looked down upon my companion in
the boat; she lay sound asleep, with her head upon the basket of tobacco
pipes, her bonnet wet and dripping, with its faded ribbons hanging in
the water which washed to and fro at the bottom of the boat, as it
rolled and rocked to the motion of the waves; her hair had fallen over
her face, so as almost to conceal her features; I thought that she had
died during the night, so silent and so breathless did she lie. The
waves were not so rough now as they ha