ed
in pouring water over the inert figure lying on the bottom boards. In a
spasm of fear he sprang up and began to scramble wildly towards his
wife, who in her nervousness was gripping the gunwale, but was facing
the affair silently and pluckily. "Keep still there!" peremptorily
ordered the sailor; and the man bundled down without a word, like a
dog, an abject heap of wet rags.

The first weight of the squall was released. The _Mona_ eased. But the
rain set in with steadiness and definition. Nothing was in sight but
the waves shaping in the murk and passing us, and the blurred outline
of a ketch labouring under reduced canvas to leeward. The bundle on the
boat's floor sat up painfully and glanced over the gunwale. He made no
attempt to disguise his complete defeat by our circumstances. He saw
the ketch, saw she was bigger, and humbly and loudly implored Yeo to
put him aboard. He did not look at his wife. His misery was in full
possession of him. When near to the ketch we saw something was wrong
with a flag she was flying. We got round to her lee quarter and hailed
the three muffled figures on her deck.

"Can we come aboard?" roared Yeo.

One of the figures came to the ship's side and leaned over. "All
right," we heard, "if you don't mind sailing with a corpse."

Yeo put it to his passengers. The woman said nothing. Her pale face,
pitifully tiny and appealing within a sailor's tarpaulin hat, showed an
innocent mind startled by the brutality of a world she did not know,
but a mind controlled and alert. You could guess she expected nothing
now but the worst, and had been schooling herself to face it. Her
husband, when he knew what was on that ship, repudiated the vessel with
horror. Yet we had no sooner fallen slightly away than he looked up
again, was reminded once more that she stood so much higher than our
boat, and cried, "Yes, yes!"

The two craft imperceptibly approached, as by gravitation. The men of
the ketch saw we had changed our minds, and made ready to receive us.
On one noisy uplift of a wave we got the lady inboard. Waiting another
opportunity, floundering about below the black wall of the ship,
presently it came, and we shoved over just anyhow the helpless bulk of
the man. He disappeared within the ship like a shapeless sack, and
bumped like one. When I got over, I saw the _Mona's_ mast, which was
thrusting and falling by the side of the ketch, making wild
oscillations and eccentrics, suddenly vanish;