d like ages, it dawned
on him; the masts had snapped like carrots, both were over the side, and
the hulk was only a half-sunken plaything for the seas to hurl hither
and thither. Larmor? Gone! How long? These things chased each other
through his dim mind; he slipped his arm out and crept clear; then a
perception struck him with the force of a material thing; a return wave
leaped up with a slow, spent lunge on the starboard side, and a black
something--wreckage? No. A shudder of the torn nerves told the young man
what it was. He slid desperately over and made his clutch; the great
backwash seemed as though it would tear his arm out of the socket, but
he hung on, and presently a lucky lift enabled him to haul Larmor on
board! All this passed in a few lying instants, but centuries---
aeons--could not count its length in the anguish-stricken human soul.

I once knew a sailor who was washed through a port in a Biscay gale; the
return sea flung him on board again. I asked, "What did you think?"

He answered, "I thought, 'I'm overboard.'"

"And when you touched deck again, what did you think?"

"I thought, 'Blowed if I'm not aboard again.'"

"Did the time seem long?"

"Longer than all my lifetime."

Not more than half a minute had passed since the hulk shook herself
clear, but Larmor and Lewis had lived long. The doctor took out the
handy flask and put it to the skipper's lips; the poor man's eyes were
bright and conscious, but his jaw hung. He pointed to his chin, and the
doctor knew that the blow of falling mast or wreckage had dislocated the
jaw.

In all the wide world was there such another drama of peril and tenor
being enacted? Lewis's hands almost refused their office; he was
unsteady on his legs, but he gathered his powers with a desperate effort
of the will, and set the man's jaw. "Stop, stop! You mustn't speak.
Wait." With a dripping handkerchief and his own belt Ferrier bound
Larmor's jaw up; then for the first time he looked for the fellows
forward.

Both gone! Oh! friends who trifle cheerily with that dainty second
course, what does your turbot cost? Reckon it up by rigid arithmetic,
and work out the calculation when you are on your knees if you can. All
over the North Sea that night there were desolate places that rang to
the cry of parting souls; after vain efforts and vain hopes, the
drowning seamen felt the last lethargy twine like a cold serpent around
them; the pitiless sea smote them dumb; the pi