mad sister, as
they both shut their eyes at a great white wave. "If I possibly survive,
I will try to know better. But ever from my childhood I am getting into
scrapes."

The boat labored on, with a good many grunts, but not a word from any
one. More than once we were obliged to fetch up as a great billow topped
the poor shingle bank; and we took so much water on board that the
men said afterward that I saved them. I only remember sitting down and
working at the bucket with both hands, till much of the skin was
gone, and my arms and many other places ached. But what was that to be
compared with drowning?

At length we were opposite "Desolate Hole," which was a hole no longer,
but filled and flooded with the churning whirl and reckless dominance
of water. Tufts and tussocks of shattered brush and rolling wreck played
round it, and the old gray stone of mullioned windows split the wash
like mooring-posts. We passed and gazed; but the only sound was the
whistling of the tempest, and the only living sight a sea-gull, weary of
his wings, and drowning.

"No living creature can be there," the Major broke our long silence.
"Land, my friends, if land we may. We risk our own lives for nothing."

The men lay back on their oars to fetch the gallant boat to the wind
again, when through a great gap in the ruins they saw a sight that
startled manhood. At the back of that ruin, on the landward side, on a
wall which, tottered under them, there were two figures standing. One a
tall man, urging on, the other a woman shrinking. At a glance, or with
a thought, I knew them both. One was Lord Castlewood's first love, the
other his son and murderer.

Our men shouted with the whole power of their hearts to tell that
miserable pair to wait till succor should be brought to them. And the
Major stood up and waved his hat, and in doing so tumbled back again.
I can not tell--how could I tell in the thick of it?--but an idea or a
flit of fancy touched me (and afterward became conviction) that while
the man heard us not at all, and had no knowledge of us, his mother
turned round and saw us all, and faced the storm in preference.

Whatever the cause may have been, at least she suddenly changed her
attitude. The man had been pointing to the roof, which threatened to
fall in a mass upon them, while she had been shuddering back from the
depth of eddying waves below her. But now she drew up her poor bent
figure, and leaned on her son to obey him.