insolent surprise, it violently stopped or lifted. It was made
the more uncertain and distressing by the swaying of the water which had
entered the hull. Sometimes, too, the under boiling of a crushed billow
caused a great lurch to windward; and after each of these struggles came a
reel to leeward which threatened to turn the wreck bottom up; the breakers
meantime leaping aboard with loud stampings as if resolved to beat through
the deck.

During hours of this tossing and plunging, this tearing of the wind and
battering of the sea, no one was lost. The sailors were clustered around
the boats, some clinging to the davits and others lashed to belaying pins,
exhausted by long labor, want of sleep, and constant soakings, but ready
to fight for life to the last. Coronado and Garcia were still fast to the
backstays, the former a good deal wilted by his hardships, and the latter
whimpering. Thurstane had literally seized up Clara to the outside of the
weather shrouds, so that, although she was terribly jammed by the wind,
she could not be carried away by it, while she was above the heaviest
pounding of the seas. His own position was alongside of her, secured in
like manner by ends of cordage.

Sometimes he held her hand, and sometimes her waist. She could lean her
shoulder against his, and she did so nearly all the while. Her eyes were
fixed as often on his face as on the breakers which threatened her life.
The few words that she spoke were more likely to be confessions of love
than of terror. Now and then, when a billow of unusual size had slipped
harmlessly by, he gratefully and almost joyously drew her close to him,
uttering a few syllables of cheer. She thanked him by sending all her
affectionate heart through her eyes into his.

Although there had been no explanations as to the past, they understood
each other's present feelings. It could not be, he was sure, that she
clung to him thus and looked at him thus merely because she wanted him to
save her life. She had been detached from him by others, he said; she had
been drawn away from thinking of him during his absence; she had been
brought to judge, perhaps wisely, that she ought not to marry a poor man;
but now that she saw him again she loved him as of old, and, standing at
death's door, she felt at liberty to confess it. Thus did he translate to
himself a past that had no existence. He still believed that she had
dismissed him, and that she had done it with cruel hars