never went without
upon his own domain. And fisherman Barnes, as we rose and fell, once
more saved us from being "swamped" by his clever way of paddling through
a scallop in the stern, with the board about the first floor front to
let.

The seamen, just keeping way on the boat, sheltered their eyes with
their left hands, and fixed them on the tumultuous scene.

I also gazed through the double glass, which was a very clear one; but
none of us saw any human being at present in any peril.

"Old pilot was right, after all," said one; "but what a good job as it
come o' middle day, and best of all of a Sunday!"

"I have heered say," replied another, "that the like thing come to pass
nigh upon three hunder years agone. How did you get your things out, Jem
Bishop?"

Jem, the only one of them whose house was in the havoc, regarded with a
sailor's calmness the entry of the sea through his bedroom window, and
was going to favor us with a narrative, when one of his mates exclaimed,

"What do I see yonner, lads? Away beyond town altogether. Seemeth to me
like a fellow swimming. Miss, will you lend me spy-glass? Never seed a
double-barreled one before. Can use him with one eye shut, I s'pose?"

"No good that way, Joe," cried Barnes, with a wink of superior
knowledge, for he often had used this binocular. "Shut one eye for one
barrel--stands to reason, then, you shut both for two, my son."

"Stow that," said the quick-eyed sailor, as he brought the glass to bear
in a moment. "It is a man in the water, lads, and swimming to save the
witch, I do believe."

"Bless me!" cried the Major; "how stupid of us! I never thought once of
that poor woman. She must be washed out long ago. Pull for your lives,
my friends. A guinea apiece if you save her."

"And another from me," I cried. Whereupon the boat swept round, and the
tough ash bent, and we rushed into no small danger. For nearly half a
mile had we to pass of raging and boisterous water, almost as wild as
the open sea itself at the breaches of the pebble ridge. And the risk of
a heavy sea boarding us was fearfully multiplied by having thus to cross
the storm instead of breasting it. Useless and helpless, and only in
the way, and battered about by wind and sea, so that my Sunday dress was
become a drag, what folly, what fatuity, what frenzy, I might call it,
could ever have led me to jump into that boat? "I don't know. I only
know that I always do it," said my sensible self to its