ting all his life, yielded passively to the attacks of the
relentless fiend of the salt waters, with rigid features, and a face
pale as the faces of the dead. He sat with his head bowed between his
hands, as motionless as if he had suddenly been frozen into stone. Flora
often lifted the cape of the cloak which partially concealed his face,
to ascertain that he was still alive.

The anxiety she felt in endeavouring to protect her infant from the
pouring rain, perhaps acted as an antidote to this distressing malady,
for, though only just out of a sick bed, she did not feel the least
qualmish.

Hannah, the servant, lay stretched at the bottom of the boat, her head
supported by the ballast-bags, in a state too miserable to describe;
while James Hawke, the lad who was to accompany them in their long
voyage, had sunk into a state of happy unconsciousness, after having
vainly wished, for the hundredth time, that he was safe on shore,
scampering over the village green with his twelve brothers and sisters,
and not tempting the angry main in an open boat, with the windows of
heaven discharging waters enough upon his defenceless head to drown
him--without speaking of the big waves that every moment burst into the
boat, giving him a salt bath upon a gigantic scale.

After an hour's hard rowing, the _King William_ (for so their boat was
called), cast anchor in the roadstead, distant about eight miles from
the town, and lay to, waiting for the coming-up of the steamer.

Hours passed away,--the day wore slowly onward,--but still the vessel
they expected did not appear. The storm, which had lulled till noon,
increased in violence, until it blew "great guns," to use the sailors'
nautical phraseology; and signs of uneasiness began to be manifested by
the hardy crew of the pilot-boat.

"Some accident must have befallen the steamer," said Palmer, the captain
of the boat, to Craigie, a fine, handsome young seaman, as he handed him
the bucket to bale the water from their vessel. "I don't like this;
I'll be ---- if I do! If the wind increases, and remains in the present
quarter, a pretty kettle of fish it will make of us. We may be thankful
if we escape with our lives."

"Is there any danger?" demanded Flora eagerly, as she clasped her wet,
cold baby closer to her breast. The child had been crying piteously for
the last hour.

"Yes, Madam," he replied respectfully; "we have been in considerable
danger all day. The wind is increasing w