n, slept
soundly, while their preserver, scorning even in his drenched condition
to feel the need of his warm garment, did his best at the oars.

With the first light of dawn a speck appeared on the horizon. It slowly
grew larger, sometimes seeming to recede, and often disappearing
utterly, until at last the straining eyes that watched it discerned its
outline. It was a ship under full sail! Everything now depended upon
being able to attract attention. One of the women, wrapped in a large
white woollen mantle, snatched it off; it would serve as a signal of
distress. The men hoisted the garment upon an oar, and, heavy and wet
though it was, waved it wildly in the air.

"She's seen us!" cried Sailor Jack at last. "Hooray! She's headin'
straight for us!"

And so she was.

Before sunset of that day, the honest sailor, with two babies, and all
his companions in the boat were comfortably quartered on what proved to
be the good ship "Cumberland," a sailing vessel bound for the port of
New York.

Once safely on board, Sailor Jack had time to reflect on his somewhat
novel position--a jolly tar, as he expressed it, with two helpless
little kids to take ashore as salvage. That the babies did not now
belong to him never entered his mind; they were his twins, to be cared
for and to keep, he insisted, till the "Cumberland" should touch shore;
and his to keep and care for ever after, unless somebody with a better
right and proof positive should meet him in New York and claim them, or
else that some of their relatives should be saved in one of the other
boats.

So certain was he of his rights, that when the captain's wife, who
happened to be on board, offered to care for the little creatures, he,
concealing his helplessness as a nurse, accepted her kindness with a
lordly air and as though it were really a favor on his part. "Them twins
is Quality," he would say, "and I can't have 'em meddled with till I
find the grand folks they belong to. Wash their leetle orphan faces, you
may; feed 'em, you may; and keep 'em warm, you may; but their leetle
jackets, night gownds, and petticuts, an' caps has got to stay just as
they are, to identify 'em. And this ere gimcrack on the leetle
miss--gold it is, you may well say" (touching the chain on the baby's
neck admiringly)--"this ere gimcrack likely's got a legal consequence to
its folks, which I couldn't and wouldn't undertake to calc'late."

Meantime the sailors would stand around, lookin