ly white face was
turned shoreward.

The might of twenty men was in his arms then. He flung back the rushing
waves with his oars, and from a will fiercer than his strength, forced
his boat toward her. In a minute the darkness of death was around him.
Blasts of wind and great gushes of rain swept over him. He shouted
aloud. He beat the waters madly with his oars. He called upon God for
one more flash of lightning.

It came. He saw a distant steamer, an up-turned boat and something
darker than the foam heaving upon the waters.

"Hold on! Hold on!--I'm coming--I'm coming--it's Ben--it's Ben. Oh God,
give me light!"

He was answered. A crash of thunder--a trail of fire--and an old cedar
tree on the shore flamed up with the light he had prayed for.

It flamed up and Ben saw a man plunge from the rocks into the boiling
waters. He bent to the oar, his boat rushed through the waves, and as he
came one way, that white face moved steadily from the shore. The waters
were buffeted fiercely around it. Some mighty power seemed to sweep back
the storm from where it moved.

It disappeared, rose and sunk again. Ben pushed his boat to the spot
where he had seen Mabel disappear. His bow dashed against the little
boat already broken in twain, and its fragments broke upon the water. He
looked wildly about. The face was gone. The dark heap which he had taken
for Mabel, had disappeared. Ben's strong arms began to tremble; tears of
anguish met the beating rain, as it broke over his face. Despair seized
upon him. He dashed his oars into the bottom of the boat and stood up,
ready for a plunge. He would never go back and say that his mistress had
been suffered to drown before his face. His clasped hands were
uplifted--the boat reeled under him--he was poised for the mad plunge!

No, his hands fell. A hoarse shout broke from him.

"Here, here I am! here--away!"

He seized the oars again, looking wildly around, for the voice that had
hailed him by name, up from the deep, as it seemed. It came again, and
close by the boat that grand head appeared struggling for life.

Ben struck out his oars.

"Do not move--do not strike, or you may kill her yet!"

"Is she there? Can you hold on?" cried Ben, trembling in every limb of
his stout frame.

A hand seized one side of the boat. Close to the manly head he had seen,
was the marble face of Mabel Harrington, half veiled by tresses of wet
hair. Ben fell upon his knees, and plunging his arms into