r or quench its flame but _it_ glowed on with
steady lustre in the midst of them--flung its victorious path of
splendour over their raging motion, warned from the sunken reef the
weary mariner, and looked forth untroubled with its broad, calm eye into
the madness and fury of the tempest-haunted night.

Through this broad track of light the boat was driven, and Walter
shouted at the top of his voice with all his remaining strength. The
three men in the lighthouse fancied indeed, as they acknowledged
afterwards, that they had heard some shouts; but strange, mysterious,
inarticulate voices are often borne upon the wind, and haunt always the
lonely wastes of foamy sea. The lighthouse men had often heard these
unexplained wailings and weird screams. Many a time they had looked
out, and been so continually deceived, that unless human accents were
unmistakable and well-defined, they attribute these sounds to other
agencies, or to the secret phenomena of the worst storms. And even if
they _had_ heard, what could they have done, or how have launched their
boat when the billows were running mountain-high about their perilous
rock?

Charlie had been quiet for a long time, his face hidden on Walter's
shoulder; but he had seen the glare which the light threw across the
waves, and had observed that they had gradually been driven through it
into the blackness again, and he asked, "Have we passed the lighthouse,
Walter?"

"We have."

"Oh, I am so hungry and burning with thirst! Oh! what shall we do?"

"Try not to think about it, Charlie; a little fasting won't hurt us
much."

Another long pause, during which they clung more closely to each other,
and their hearts beat side by side, and then Charlie said, in a barely
articulate whisper--

"Walter!"

"I know what you are going to say, Charlie."

"The water in the boat is nearly up to my knees."

"We have shipped a great deal, you know."

"Yes; and besides that--"

"Yes, it is true; there is a leak. Do you mind my putting you down and
trying what I can do to bail the water out?"

"O Walter, don't put me off your knee--don't let go of me."

"Very well, Charlie; it wouldn't be of much use."

"Good God!" cried the little boy in a paroxysm of agony, "we are
sinking--we are foundering!"

They wound their arms round each other, and Walter said, "It is even so,
my darling brother. Death is near, but God is with us; and if it is
death, then death means rest and heaven