I must show you
the place where I found it. It is not a bit cold. And oh! Tom, I'm
beginning to love this lonely island, and the rough life, and the
tame seals, and the wild goats, and the fowls, and black Manuel, and,
and--oh, everything! And look, Tom dear, over there at the lighthouse
at Deal Island. I really believe the light was never shining as it is
to-night. Oh! all the world is bright to me."

CHAPTER III

Two days later, and after nearly fifteen weeks of arduous and
unremitting labour, there came, one calm night, a glorious spring tide,
and the _Dolphin_, under a full head of steam, and with her stout, broad
frame quivering and throbbing and panting, tugged away at the giant hulk
of the stranded ship; and the ship's own donkey engine and winch wheezed
and groaned as it slowly brought in inch by inch a heavy coir hawser
made fast to a rock half a cable length ahead of the tug. And then the
_Braybrook Castle_ began to move, and the wrecking gang cheered and
cheered until they were hoarse, and the second engineer of the tug and
two stokers, stripped to their waists, with the perspiration streaming
down their roasting bodies, answered with a yell--and then, lying well
over on her starboard bilge, the great ship slid off stern first into
deep water, and Tom Lester's heart leapt within him with joy and pride.

Lucy, as excited as any one else, was on the bridge with him, her face
aglow, and her hand on the lever of the engine-room telegraph.

"Half-speed, Lucy."

As the bell clanged loudly, and the heart of the sturdy tug beat less
frantically, the wrecking gang on board the ship under Lindley slipped
their end of the coir hawser from the winch barrel, and worked like
madmen to get the ship on an even keel by cutting adrift the lashings of
several hundred barrels of cement (part of the cargo) which were piled
up on the starboard side of the main deck, and letting them plunge
overboard As the ship righted herself inch by inch, and finally stood up
on an even keel, Lester made an agreed-upon signal--blowing his whistle
thrice--for Lindley to stand by his anchors, which were all ready to let
go.

His device of getting up the barrels of cement from the lower hold, and
stowing them against the iron deck stanchions (having previously
cut away the bulwark plates) so as to give the vessel a big cant to
starboard, had answered perfectly; for, high as was the tide that night,
the _Dolphin_, though so powerful, co