y
visible as a dark object. The old familiar wreck was therefore seen the
moment they cleared the bushes that fringed the bay, but close to it was
another object which was very unfamiliar indeed to their eyes. It
accounted for the cry and caused a gush of mingled feelings in the
breasts of the brothers.

Let us now, good reader, wing our flight out to sea, and backwards a
little in time. On that stormy night of which we treat, a large
emigrant ship was scudding before the gale almost under bare poles.
Part of her sails and rigging had been carried away; the rest of her was
more or less damaged. The officers, having had no reliable observation
for several days, were not sure of their exact position on the great
ocean, and the captain, being well aware of the danger of those seas,
was filled with anxiety. To add to his troubles, the crew had become
slightly mutinous, and some of the emigrants--of whom there were upwards
of three hundred on board--sided with the crew. It was even whispered
that the chief mate was at the bottom of a plot to murder the captain
and seize the ship. For what purpose, of course, no one could tell,
and, indeed, there was no apparent ground for the rumour, beyond the
fact that the mate--Malines by name--was a surly, taciturn man, with a
scowling, though handsome, visage, and a powerful frame.

But whatever of truth might have been in these rumours was never brought
to light, for an accident occurred during the gale which put the
commander of the vessel beyond the power of earthly foes. One of the
larger ropes of the vessel snapt, and the heavy block attached to it
swung against the captain with such violence as to kill him on the spot.
The momentary confusion which followed the disaster distracted the
attention of the steersman, and a heavy sea was shipped, by which the
captain's body was swept overboard. No attempt was made to lower a boat
or check the ship. Even the unskilled emigrants understood that no boat
could live in such a sea, and that rescue was impossible. The vessel
held on her wild course as if nothing had happened.

Malines, being now in command, issued an order that all the emigrants
should go below, and the hatches be secured.

The women and children and most of the men were already in their
uncomfortable quarters below hatches, but a group of hardy-looking
fellows, who held on to ropes and stanchions near the windlass, refused
to move. Among them was a remarkably