knew that his regard for this stranger who had fallen across
his path would remain unchanged while his life should last.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE LAST EFFORT.

It was after a long and arduous journey which had left its mark on all
of them that Wyllard and his companions lay among the boulders beside a
sheltered inlet waiting for the dusk to fall one lowering evening.
They were cramped and aching, for they had scarcely moved during the
last hour; their garments were badly tattered, and their half-covered
feet were bleeding. They were, as they recognised, a pitiful company
to seize a vessel, with three knives and one rifle between them, but
there was resolution in their haggard faces.

Close in front of them the green water lapped softly among the stones.
The breeze was light off shore, and the tide, which was just running
ebb, rippled against the bows of a little schooner lying some thirty
yards from the bank. She had been seized for illegal sealing some
years earlier, and it was evident that she had been very little used
since then. The paint was peeling from her cracked and weathered side,
her gear was frayed and bleached with frost and rain, and only very
hard-pressed men would have faced the thought of going to sea in her.
Wyllard and his companions were, however, very hard-pressed indeed, and
they preferred the hazards of a voyage in the crazy vessel to falling
into the Russians' hands. It was also clear that they had no choice.
It must be either one thing or the other.

Some little distance up-stream a low rise cut against the dingy sky.
It shut off all view of the upper part of the inlet, which wound in
behind it, but Wyllard and his companions had cautiously climbed the
slope earlier in the afternoon, and lying flat upon the summit had
looked down upon the little wooden houses that clustered above the
beach. He had then decided that this part of the inlet would dry out
at about half-ebb, and as the schooner's boat, which he meant to seize,
lay upon the shingle it was evident that he must carry out his plans
within the next three hours.

These were very simple. There was nobody on board the schooner, which
lay in deeper water, and he fancied that it would be possible to swim
off to her and slip the cable; but they must have provisions, and there
was, so far as he could see, only one way of obtaining them. A
building which stood by itself close beside the beach was evidently a
store, for he had seen