k he--Mr. Seymour--can be yet alive?" she asked, still cherishing a
faint hope.

The colonel shook his head gloomily, and then stooping down and looking
at the prostrate form of the man on the deck, he asked,--

"But who is this you have here?"

The man opened his eyes at this moment and looked up vacantly.

"William Bentley, sir," he said in a hoarse whisper, as if in answer to
the question; and then making a vain effort to raise his hand to his
head, he went on half-mechanically, "bosun of the Randolph, sir. Come
aboard!"

"Merciful Powers, it is old Bentley!" cried the colonel. "Can anything
be done for you, my man? How is it with you?"

Katharine poured a little more of the cordial down his throat, which
gave him a fictitious strength for a moment, and he answered in a
little stronger voice, with a glance of recognition and wonder,--

"The colonel and the young miss! we thought you dead in the wreck of
the Radnor. He will be glad;" and then after a pause recollection came
to him. "Oh, God!" he murmured, "Mr. Seymour!"

"What of him? Speak!" cried Katharine, in agony.

"Gone with the rest," he replied with an effort "'T was a good fight,
though. The other ships,--where are they?"

"Escaped," answered the colonel; "we are too much cut up to pursue."

"Why did you do it?" moaned Katharine, thinking of Seymour's attack on
the ship of the line.

The old man did not heed the question; his eyes closed. He was still a
moment, and then he opened his eyes again slowly. Straight above him
waved the standard of his enemy.

"I never thought--to die--under the English flag," he said slowly and
with great effort. Supplying its place with her own young soft arm,
Katharine drew forth the little American ensign which had served him
for a pillow--stained with his own blood--and held it up before him. A
light came into his dying eyes,--a light of heaven, perhaps, no pain in
his heart now. One trembling hand would still do his bidding; by a
superhuman effort of his resolute will he caught the bit of bunting and
carried it to his lips in a long kiss of farewell. His lips moved. He
was saying something. Katharine bent to listen. What was it? Ah! she
heard; they were the words he said on the deck of the transport when
they saw the ship wrecked in the pass in the beating seas,--the words
he had repeated in the old farmhouse on that winter night to the great
general, when he told the story of that cruise; the