ter that one vivid
glance in which she apparently saw her lover dead on his own
quarter-deck beneath her, stood clinging rigidly to the bulwarks as if
paralyzed. It was the body of a man; instinctively she threw out her
strong young arm and saved it from falling again into the sea on the
return roll of the ship. One or two of the seamen standing by came to
her assistance, and the body was dragged on board and laid on the deck
at her feet. Something familiar in the figure moved Katharine to a
further examination. She knelt down and wiped the blood and smoke and
dust from the face of the prostrate man, and recognized him at once.
It was old Bentley, desperately wounded, his clothes soaked with blood
from several severe wounds, and apparently dying fast, but still
breathing. A small tightly rolled up ball of bunting was lying near
her on the deck; it was a flag from the Randolph, which had been blown
there by the force of the explosion. She quickly picked it up and
pillowed the head of the unconscious man upon it. Then she ran below
to her cabin, coming back in a moment with water and a cordial, with
which she bathed the head and wiped the lips of the dying man. The
fires were all forward, and, the wind being aft, the danger was in the
fore part of the ship; no one therefore paid the least attention to
her. There was, in fact, save the captain and one or two midshipmen,
no one else on the poop-deck except her father, who like herself had
been overwhelmed by the sudden and awful ending of the battle. Being
without anything to do, the colonel, who had been watching the men
fight with the fire, happened to look aft for a moment and saw his
daughter by the side of the prostrate man. He stepped over to her at
once.

"Katharine, Katharine," he said to her in a tone of stern reproof and
surprise, not as he usually spoke to her, "you here! 'T is no place
for women. When did you come from below?"

"I've not been below at all, father," she replied, looking up at him
with a white, stricken face which troubled his loving heart.

"Do you mean to tell me that you have been on deck during the action?"

"Yes, father, right here. Do you not understand that it was Mr.
Seymour's ship--I could not go away!"

"By heavens! Think of it! And I forgot you completely-- The fault
was mine, how could I have allowed it?" he continued in great agitation.

"Never mind, father; I could not have gone below in any case. Do you
thin