me his words and his smile seemed to imply a bitter irony; but they
were said very earnestly.

Castro had hauled the helpless form of old Rangsley forward. I caught
him muttering savagely:

"I could kill that old man!"

He did not want to be drowned; neither assuredly did I. But it was not
fear so much as a feeling of dreariness and disappointment that had come
over me, the sudden feeling that I was going not to adventure, but to
death; that here was not romance, but an end--a disenchanted surprise
that it should soon be all over.

We kept a grim silence. Further out in the bay, we were caught in a
heavy squall. Sitting by the tiller, I got as much out of her as I knew
how. We would go as far as we could before the run was over. Carlos
bailed unceasingly, and without a word of complaint, sticking to his
self-appointed task as if in very truth he were careless of life.
A feeling came over me that this, indeed, was the elevated and the
romantic. Perhaps he was tired of his life; perhaps he really regretted
what he left behind him in England, or somewhere else--some association,
some woman. But he, at least, if we went down together, would
go gallantly, and without complaint, at the end of a life with
associations, movements, having lived and regretted. I should disappear
in-gloriously on the very threshold.

Castro, standing up unsteadily, growled, "We may do it yet! See, senor!"

The blue gleam was much larger--it flared smokily up towards the sky. I
made out ghastly parallelograms of a ship's sails high above us, and at
last many faces peering unseeingly over the rail in our direction. We
all shouted together.

I may say that it was thanks to me that we reached the ship. Our boat
went down under us whilst I was tying a rope under Carlos' arms. He
was standing up with the baler still in his hand. On board, the women
passengers were screaming, and as I clung desperately to the rope that
was thrown me, it struck me oddly that I had never before heard so many
women's voices at the same time. Afterwards, when I stood on the deck,
they began laughing at old Rangsley, who held forth in a thunderous
voice, punctuated by hiccoughs:

"They carried I aboard--a cop--theer lugger and sinks I in the cold,
co--old sea."

It mortified me excessively that I should be tacked to his tail and
exhibited to a number of people, and I had a sudden conviction of my
small importance. I had expected something altogether different--an