uate description. When the wind has an iron ring and
calls like a banshee, and the waves rise to its order as high as the
masthead, then God help the men and ships on the Bay of Biscay!

Five days after the breaking of this storm the _Elizabeth_ was
sorely in need of such potential help. Her masts were gone, the
waves were doubling over her, and her plunges were like the dive
of a whale. At the wheel there was a man lashed,--for the hull was
seldom above water,--and this man was David Borson. He was the
only sailor left strong enough for the work, and he was at the last
point of endurance. The icy gusts roared past him; the spray was
like flying whiplashes; and it was pitiful to see David, with his
bleeding hands on the wheel, stolidly shaking his head as the spray
cut him.

He had been on deck for forty hours, buffeted by the huge waves,
and he was covered with salt-water boils. His feet were flayed and
frozen, and his hands so gashed that he dared not close or rest
them, lest the agony of unclasping or moving them again should make
him lose his consciousness. He feared, also, that his feet were so
badly frozen that he would never be able to walk on them any more.
These miseries others were sharing with him; but David had been
struck by a falling spar at the beginning of the storm, and there
was now an abscess forming on his lung that tortured him beyond
his usual speechless patience. "God pity me!" he moaned. "God pity
me!"

When the storm ceased the _Elizabeth_ was as bare as a newly
launched hull, and wallowing like a soaked log. David had fallen
forward on his face, and was asleep or insensible. He did not hear
the handspike thumped upon the deck, and the cry, "_On deck! on deck!
Lord help us! she is going down!_" But some one lifted him on to
a raft which had been hastily lashed together, and the misery that
followed was only a part of some awful hours when physical pain
from head to feet drove him to the verge of madness. He never knew
how long it was before they were met by the _Alert_, a large
passenger packet going into the port of London, and taken on
board. Four of the men were then dead from exhaustion, and the
physician on the _Alert_ looked doubtfully at David's feet.

"But he is dying," he said, "and why give him further pain?"

Then a young man stepped forward and looked at David. There was
both pity and liking in his face, and he stooped, and said something
in the dying man's ear. A faint smile