so short-handed that the steward was working at the pumps,
whose metallic clanking sound was plainly heard all over the vessel.

Pausing a moment as he glanced around, Hughes realised the scene, and
then, passing on, knocked at the door of a small cabin.

The knock was low and timidly given. It produced no reply, so, turning
the handle, he entered.

He stood in the Portuguese noble's private cabin, and he became at once
aware that the injuries which Dom Maxara had received were of a graver
character than the mate had led him to suppose. In point of fact, the
broken thigh caused by being jammed in between the pump and the brig's
mainmast was not all, for several ribs had been broken, by the heavy
blocks which had been rolled to and fro, and some severe internal injury
had been received. What was even worse was that there was no doctor on
board, and so there on the tumbled bed lay the injured noble, his grey
hairs falling on the pillow, while by the bedside, her face buried in
the clothes, sat Isabel fast asleep. Several large stains of blood
marked the sheet, and the sick man's eyes, though closed, seemed sunken,
and the lips deadly white. The morning was breaking fine and calm.

Kneeling down beside her, after carefully closing the door, Hughes
passed his arm gently round the sleeping girl's waist. She awoke with a
start, glancing round her with a terrified look, as she pushed back the
long hair from her face and forehead. For a few moments, so deep had
been the sleep of fatigue and exhaustion, she knew not where she was or
what had happened, but as her startled gaze fell on the narrow bed, the
whole of the sorrowful present returned to her. Dom Maxara was
breathing very heavily, and with great difficulty.

"Oh, Enrico, how wicked I have been," she exclaimed. "How could I go to
sleep?"

"How could you avoid it, dear Isabel, after such a time of mental and
bodily fatigues. Has he spoken?" asked Hughes, looking up into her
face.

"No, he has never moved, never opened his eyes; but I don't know how
long I have been asleep," was the reply. "What is the news on deck? If
we could only get him ashore, my dear dear father!"

"The gale is completely broken, the sea rapidly falling, and we shall
soon have a dead calm, Isabel; but the leak is gaining on us, some plank
must be started, and there is ten feet water in the hold."

"Is land far off?" asked the girl, whose face looked pale and careworn.
"If we coul