till, his head obediently thrown
back on Taffy's breast. The mare had ceased to scream. The water
rippled in the ears as each leg-thrust drove them little by little
across the current.

If George had but listened! It was so easy, after all. The
sand-bank still slid past them, but less rapidly. They were close to
it now, and had only to lie still and be drifted against the leaning
stanchions of the wreck. Taffy flung an arm about one and checked
his way quietly, as a man brings a boat alongside a quay. He hoisted
Joey first upon the stanchion, then up the tilted deck to the gap of
the main hatchway. Within this, with their feet on the steps and
their chests leaning on the side panel of the companion, they rested
and took breath.

"Cold, sonny?"

The child burst into tears.

Taffy dragged off his own coat and wrapped him in it. The small body
crept close, sobbing, against his side.

Across, on the shore, voices were calling, blue eyes moving. A pair
of yellow lights came towards these, travelling swiftly upon the
hillside. Taffy guessed what they were.

The yellow lights moved more slowly. They joined the blue ones, and
halted. Taffy listened. But the voices were still now; he heard
nothing but the hiss of the black water, across which those two lamps
sought and questioned him like eyes.

"God help her!"

He bowed his face on his arms. A little while, and the sands would
be covered, the boats would put off; a little while. . . . Crouching
from those eyes he prayed God to lengthen it.

CHAPTER XXVII.

HONORIA.

She was sitting there rigid, cold as a statue, when the rescuers
brought them ashore and helped them up the slope. A small crowd
surrounded the carriage. In the rays of their moving lanterns her
face altered nothing to all their furtive glances of sympathy
opposing the same white mask. Some one said, "There's only two,
then!" Another, with a nudge and a nod at the carriage, told him to
hold his peace. She heard. Her lips hardened.

Lizzie Pezzack had rushed down to the shore to meet the boat.
She was bringing her child along with a fond, wild babble of tender
names and sobs and cries of thankfulness. In pauses, choked and
overcome, she caught him to her, felt his limbs, pressed his wet face
against her neck and bosom. Taffy, supported by strong arms and
hurried in her wake, had a hideous sense of being paraded in her
triumph. The men around him who had raised a faint c