clinging to the deck of the
doomed ship, and stretching a hand appealingly in the direction of his
boat.

In an instant his senses returned to him.

"Put back, men!" he cried, frantically.

"It is certain death!" cried one of the crew.

"Must William the Atheling order a thing twice?" thundered the prince,
in a tone so terrible, that the men immediately turned and made for the
wreck.

"My sister!" shouted William, as they came under the spot where Adela
clung; "throw yourself into my arms!"

She did so; but, alas! at the same moment, fifty more, in the
desperation of terror, jumped too, and the little boat, with all that
were in her, turned over, and was seen no more.

Then the waters poured over the "White Ship," and with a great plunge
that gallant vessel went down.

With her went down all the souls she carried save three. One of these
was the brave Fitz-Stephen. Rising to the surface, he saw the two
others clinging to a spar. Eagerly he swam towards them.

"Is the prince saved?" he asked.

"We have seen nothing of him," replied they.

"Then woe is me!" exclaimed he, as he turned in the water and sank
beneath it.

Of the other two, one only, a butcher, survived to carry the dreadful
news to England.

For many days, Henry, impatient for his son's arrival, waited in
ignorance of his sad fate.

Then went to him a little child, who, instructed what to say, told him
in his own artless way the whole story; and King Henry the First, so
they say, after he had heard it, was never seen to smile again.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

JOHN PLANTAGENET, THE BOY WHO BROKE HIS FATHER'S HEART.

A youth was pacing restlessly to and fro in a wood bordering on the old
town of Tours, in France. He was scarcely twenty years of age, and of a
forbidding countenance. Cruelty and cunning were stamped on his
features, and as he strode aimlessly among the trees, muttering to
himself, and striking often with his sheathed sword at the bushes and
twigs in his path, he seemed to be the victim of an evil passion, with
nothing to make a man love him or desire his acquaintance.

His muttering not unfrequently rose to the pitch of talking aloud, when
one might have heard sentences like these.

"Why should I longer delay? Am not I John, the son of Henry of England,
a man? and shall I submit to be treated for ever as a child? Are my
brothers, who have rebelled against their father, to have ah the spoil,
and I, who have remained obe