de on to her former course, and before the cry was well off
O'Sullivan Og's lips, it swept violently athwart a cable hauled taut by
the weight of a vessel straining to the flow of the tide. In a
twinkling the boat careened, throwing its occupants into the water.

Colonel John and Bale were nearest to the hawser, and managed, suddenly
as the thing happened, to seize it and cling to it. But the first wave
washed over them, blinding them and choking them; and, warned by this,
they worked themselves desperately along the rope until their shoulders
were clear of the water and they could twist a leg over their slender
support.

That effected, they could spit out the water, breathe again, and look
about them. They shouted for help once, twice, thrice, thinking that
some on the great ship looming dim and distant to shoreward of them
must hear. But their shouts were merged in the wail of despair, of
shrieks and cries that floated away into the mist. The boat, travelling
with the last of the tide, had struck the cable with force, and was
already drifting a gunshot away. Whether any saved themselves on it,
the two clinging to the hawser could not see.

Bale, shivering and scared, would have shouted again, but Colonel John
stayed him. "God rest their souls!" he said solemnly. "The men aboard
can do nothing. By the time they'll have lowered a boat it will be done
with these."

"They can take us aboard," Bale said.

"Ay, if we want to go to Cadiz gaol," Colonel John answered slowly. He
was peering keenly towards the land.

"But what can we do, your honour?" Bale asked with a shiver.

"Swim ashore."

"God forbid!"

"But you can swim?"

"Not that far. Not near that far, God knows!" Bale repeated with
emphasis, his teeth chattering. "I'll go down like a stone."

"Cadiz gaol! Cadiz gaol!" Colonel John muttered. "Isn't it worth a swim
to escape that?"

"Ay, ay, but----"

"Do you see that oar drifting? In a twinkling it will be out of reach.
Off with your boots, man, off with your clothes, and to it! That oar is
freedom! The tide is with us still, or it would not be moving that way.
But let the tide turn and we cannot do it."

"It's too far!"

"If you could see the shore," Colonel John argued, "you'd think nothing
of it! With your chin on that oar, you can't sink. But it must be done
before we are chilled."

He was stripping himself to his underclothes while he talked: and in
haste, fearing that he might feel the haws