from out the darkness.

"Hallo! give way, my lads," and on went the cutter, the stout ash staves
bending as the men forced her through the water.

"Brig ahoy!" came the feeble shout, and giving the cutter a yaw to port
her bows, grazed a large spar, while the bowman holding on with his
boat-hook, the forms of two men were seen lashed to it. They were soon
hauled on board, and the cutter again in motion. For fully an hour did
Captain Weber row over the spot, but uselessly. There were remains of
wreck, of broken, half-charred planks and shattered timbers; but, with
the exception of these, and the two men first met with, not a vestige of
the stately ship remained.

"Fill and make sail, Mr Blount," said the captain, as he once more put
his foot on the quarter-deck; "send those two poor fellows below, and
let my steward see to their comfort. We will hear their tale
presently."

"Had we not better lie to till morning; may there not yet be some other
survivor?"

"Not a chance. I have pulled round the whole spot over and over again.
We have done all we can do. Lay her head again for Delagoa Bay,"
replied Captain Weber, as he went below, and so the yards were braced
round, the courses sheeted home, the royals once more set, and with a
fair wind the brig found herself, when morning dawned, seventy miles
from the scene of the late disaster. The horizon was clear, not a sail
being in sight; the whistling of the wind, the scream of the gulls,
which were now wheeling round the brig, showing the proximity to land,
those and the whish of the breaking wave being the only noises heard.
The decks had been holystoned, the sailors were busy coiling down spare
ropes or cleaning the brasswork, which was already as bright as could
be, and the regular step of the officer of the watch could be heard as
he paced the quarter-deck by those below.

The party in the cabin consisted of Captain Weber, his first officer,
his passenger, and the master of the "Argonaut," the ship which had been
burned at sea the previous night. Of the whole crew the captain and one
seaman only had been saved.

Sad enough he looked as he sat at the well-furnished breakfast-table,
his hair singed with fire, and his right arm in a sling.

"We were bound for England, and our cargo consisted of five hundred
barrels of naphtha," he said, in reply to a question addressed to him by
the first officer of the "Halcyon."

"Why were you lying to when we first sighte