g at him,--unspeakable horror in the look,--and around
her waist the arm of the mate, on whose rather handsome face was an
evil grin.

A pang of earthly rage and jealousy shot through him, and he wished to
live. By a supreme effort of will he brought his legs close together
and his arms straight above his head; then the picture before him shot
upward, and he was immersed in cold salt water, with blackness all
about him. How long he remained under he could not guess. He had struck
feet first and suffered no harm, but had gone down like a deep-sea
lead. He felt the aching sensation in his lungs coming from suppressed
breathing, and swam blindly in the darkness, not knowing in which
direction was the surface, until he felt the marlinespike--still
fastened to his neck--extending off to the right. Sure that it must
hang downward, he turned the other way, and, keeping it parallel with
his body, swam with bursting lungs, until he felt air upon his face and
knew that he could breathe. In choking sobs and gasps his breath came
and went, while he paddled with hands and feet, glad of his reprieve;
and when his lungs worked normally, he struck out for a white, circular
life-buoy, not six feet away. "Bless her for this," he prayed, as he
slipped it under his arms. His oilskin trousers were cumbersome, and
with a little trouble he shed them.

He was alive, and his world was again in motion. Seas lifted and
dropped him, occasionally breaking over his head. In the calm of the
hollows, he listened for voices of possible rescuers. On the tops of
the seas,--ears filled with the roar of the gale,--he shouted, facing
to leeward, and searching with strained eyes for sign of the ship or
one of her boats. At last he saw a pin-point of light far away, and
around it and above it blacker darkness, which was faintly shaped to
the outline of a ship and canvas--hove to in the trough, with
maintopsail aback, as he knew by its foreshortening. And even as he
looked and shouted it faded away. He screamed and cursed, for he wanted
to live. He had survived that terrible fall, and it was his right.

Something white showed on the top of a sea to leeward and sank in a
hollow. He sank with it, and when he rose again it was nearer.

"Boat ahoy!" he sang out. "Boat ahoy!--this way--port a
little--steady."

He swam as he could, cumbered by the life-buoy, and with every heaving
sea the boat came nearer. At last he recognized it--the ship's dinghy;
and it wa