The group on the quarter-deck staggered together in a huddled bunch, then fell apart as Medbury and the captain slipped out and ran forward. Then the brig rose on another swell, and came up bumping, with a snarling sound along the fore-chains.

"It's some barnacled old derelict," Medbury turned to shout to the captain, who was following him with surprising swiftness, but with short, quick strides, like a waddling duck, and breathing heavily. Medbury was on the rail, peering over into the darkness, when the captain reached the fore-rigging. A group of sailors huddled about the rail.

"Here, you," called Captain March, "get fenders quick! Bring that spare royal-yard—anything!" Then he lifted himself into the rigging by Medbury's side. The next minute he was calling for a lantern and the flare.

They quickly had the yard and some planks lashed over the side, though they knew that such protections were almost futile in the lift of the swell that was then running. Under the light of the flare, gray and almost invisible in the thick night, awash at one moment, at the next showing a jagged line of railless stanchions, they saw the derelict lying almost parallel with them. With the flare in his hand, Medbury lowered himself down to the channel, looking for the place of contact. Forward of the chains the side of the brig was badly scraped, and a part of the channel was splintered; but they could see no other injury.

"Lucky she didn't come under us when we dropped," Medbury said.

"She may yet," replied the captain. He straightened up, and held his hand above his head. There was not a breath of air stirring. He turned to the mate again. "Get a boat over the side quick, Mr. Medbury," he said; "we've got to pull out of this."

They swung the boat off the center-house, and with difficulty, in the heavy swell, got her over the side and away, with Medbury and five of the men as her crew. A line was paid out to them, and run through a forward chock and passed about the capstan. Standing by the port cathead, Captain March "held turn."

"Don't know what may happen," he said aloud to himself. "I'd better keep a hold o' this in this swell." He sent a man up to the top with a lantern, and the second mate to the wheel. "Straight ahead, now!" he roared to the boat. "We don't want to swing her counter over it. Straight ahead, now, you!"

He could hear the thud of the oars in the rowlocks and their irregular beat on the water, for rowing in the swell was hard; but he could hear, too, the zip! zip! of the line as it tautened, and then the splash as it dropped slack. At times the two hulls came together with a jar, but with no great shock after the first.

Drew had come forward, and once he asked the captain if he could be of assistance. Captain March was leaning over the side, peering into the darkness for the derelict, and had not answered. When he turned to his line again, Drew repeated the question.

"No, no; just keep out of the way," replied the captain, with the impersonal contempt of the sailor for the landsman afloat in times of need.

They drew ahead but slowly; it was only by inches at the best, and there were times when they fell behind as the sweep of the sea caught them and rolled them from side to side through a wide arc. Fortunately, they were to the leeward of the wreck, and what advantage there was in their greater buoyancy and height above the sea added its little to the feeble efforts of the crew of the boat. Captain March could hear the unsteady ding-donging of the oars in the rowlocks as Medbury urged them on. He peered over the side of the brig with straining eyes.

"It ain't no way to go—like this," once he said aloud. It seemed a trivial end, without the pomp of storm and the exaltation that comes with the last struggle for life. He longed for the struggle for himself, he longed for it for his vessel.

At last there came a time when he could no longer see the derelict, and he grew restive under the uncertainty. All at once he thought he felt a breath of air across his face. He straightened himself, and held his hand up to the wind. It was surely a puff, and, quickly making the line fast, he hurried aft to take the wheel."Get your staysails on her," he told the second mate, as he relieved him. "Set your maintopmast staysail first,—there'll be a steadier air up there,—then get your foretopmast staysail on her." He turned to Drew. "Just bear a hand there, will you?" he said to him.

He heard the staysail run up and the cry of the second mate to belay; then he heard them sheeting it home.

"Not too flat, Mr. Barrett! Not too flat!" he called. "Give her an easy sheet, so she'll lift a little. Now up with the others!"

He saw Hetty's face at the companionway, and glanced at her with half-averted eyes. She was a true sailor's daughter, he thought with pride. He did not object to her presence, for she never worried folks with questions. Then he called to her:

"It's all right, my girl. Don't you worry. Just tell your mother it's all right."

He heard the staysails flap from time to time, and so began to whistle for a wind. "Deuce take it!" he muttered, "why don't it blow?" Every moment or two he stepped to the rail and peered into the darkness to note his progress. They had slowly drifted away from the wreck, the stern of which now lay opposite the quarter-deck of the brig. The second mate came running aft.

"Shall we brace the yards around, and try to get what canvas we can on her, sir?" he asked.

Captain March shook his head.

"No," he answered; "you couldn't do much, short-handed as you are. Maybe we'd just lose control of her. But you go forward and call to Mr. Medbury to keep a-going—keep a-going."

It was a quarter of an hour before the derelict's stern was clearly past the brig's. Slowly the house crept past—a high house, Captain March could now see plainly, and painted white. "Some foreigner," he thought with scorn, "scared to his boats before he was hurt." He felt all the contempt of his race and kind for timid unseafaring peoples.

Once when the wreck sank deeply in the hollow of the sea, and the swell broke over her, she came up sputtering, and Captain March heard the water gushing from some opening with the rhythmic chug-chug of water gurgling from a bottle.

"That's what we heard," he said aloud. It sounded uncanny even now. "I guess it's a water-butt that's shifted over on its side and the sea washes full," he thought. "Well, it's creepy enough."

Suddenly he gave a start, for from the wreck came the faint, unmistakable crying of a cat. He walked to the rail and listened, muttering to himself: "The scoundrels, to leave her behind!" He stood by the rail for a moment, and presently called: "Kitty! kitty! poor kitty!" Then he went back to the wheel again, whistling loudly for a wind, that he might not hear the plaintive response to his call.

For a time the situation had worn for Hetty a certain pleasurable aspect of romance; but in the dragging moments that followed the sending away of the boat, her nerves grew tense under the strain, and seemed to present, as it were, sharp edges to the irritating suspense. The low-riding wreck, awash at one moment, at the next looming threateningly above them, showing its jagged outlines uncertainly through the enlarging fog, took on an aspect wholly sinister. With only the desire to get beyond sight of it, she crossed to the starboard main-rigging, and gazed steadily out across the vaporous expanse of the windless sea.

Her resolute refusal to watch the derelict took on, in her mind, something of the character of a senseless game with her fear: she told herself that she would count two hundred before she looked to see if it were farther away, then five hundred; after that she resolved not to look until she heard a footstep or a voice. The latter task, unrelieved by the mechanically mental exertion of the whispered numbers, became speedily unbearable, and she began to count again. Presently a step sounded on the deck near her. In the tension of the moment she looked up, dangerously near to hysteria.

It was, of course, Drew, the only idle man aboard.

"We have passed it," he said gaily.

Her hand was resting against the rigging, and now, as he spoke, in a revulsion of feeling she laid her forehead against it and laughed.

"You poor child!" he murmured.

At that she lifted her head quickly and said:

"The whole night has been so unreal—that strange sound, the fog, our ghost talk, and this danger—" She looked past him in a strange mental relaxation, feeling the inadequacy of words to convey her immeasurable relief.

"It has been hard for you," he said gently. "I thought of you, and wished that I might help you, but I'm a helpless creature here." He smiled.

No one else had come near her or thought of her, she told herself unreasonably; and now she turned upon him the frank, open look of a child.

"You do help me," she said.

Alone in that strange calm, but barely escaped from a grave danger, they looked at each other for a moment through the distorting glass of their common isolation. Suddenly he moved toward her.

"Then may it not be for always?" he whispered. He could gather no other meaning from Medbury's speech at sunset than that he had given up all hope. He himself was free to speak at last. Yet he must have spoken in any case.

She gave a little backward spring, and laid hold of the shrouds with a hand that trembled.

"Not that!" she gasped. "Oh, I didn't mean that!"

"But I mean it," he urged. "Try to think of it favorably. You know the work I desire: let us work together. Life would mean so much to me with you near! And for you—it would be in the path of your own desires, to work among the poor."

For a moment it seemed like an open door to her hopes.

"I had thought of your work since you spoke of it," she said in a low voice; "and I wondered if they would let me try that—alone, of course, I mean," she added with pretty confusion. "I should like to do some good in the world. I seem so useless now. It gave me a new hope.""And I," he urged—"do not put me apart from it!"

She had put him apart from it, she thought. She laid her hand upon the shrouds and dropped her face to it for a moment.

"Oh, I cannot tell!" she whispered.

"Do not try to tell now," he said. "Wait! It—"

Then sharply across their absorption they heard her father calling to the second mate to order in the boat. Without a word, she slipped aft.

As the boat drew near, Captain March went to the rail.

"They've left a cat aboard," he called to Medbury. "She's forward. I shouldn't like to leave even a cat like that." Then he added, as if to show that his humanity was dictated more by reason than by sentiment, "It seems unlucky—as if we'd left her."

"All right, sir," Medbury replied; "I'll get her.""Well, don't get stove. Just as soon as you come aboard, we'll make sail. There's a little air stirring."

As the boat swung away behind them, the captain told the second mate to rig and sound the pumps. The brig was unusually tight, and it was with no uneasiness that he gave the order, which he considered merely perfunctory.

The first half-dozen strokes told a different tale. He was stooping to grip the spokes of the wheel when the first rush of water sounded on the deck, and its fullness stopped him like a blow in the face. Instantly he blew his whistle over the stern, and called to Medbury to come aboard at once. He heard Medbury's "Aye, aye, sir," and called to the second mate for a lantern. It was already on the quarter-deck when the boat swung out of the darkness in under the stern.

"We got her," Medbury called out, but Captain March made no reply. He swung the lantern down toward the boat by a lanyard.

"Find where we struck," he said, and, giving the wheel to the second mate, hurried forward.

He was standing on the fore-channel when Medbury brought the boat up, and, going as near as he dared, held the lantern over the side.

"There!" cried Medbury as the light of the lantern flashed over the scarred and abraded spots that they had already noted; but Captain March shook his head impatiently.

"No," he said curtly; "lower down. Watch when she rises."

The lantern shed a wan light upon the oily sea and the glistening black hull. Five times the brig rose and fell on the easy rollers; then she leaped to a great height, and for an instant, below the bilge, they caught sight of a jagged stretch of copper, torn, and shrunken like a withered apple. One glance showed that nothing could be done.

They had the boat over the side again in an incredibly short time. As he was rigging the fall to hoist her to her old place on the center-house, Medbury hesitated, and then hurried aft.

"Shall I lash the boat on deck, sir?" he asked, adding significantly: "We may need it."

"No, sir," replied the captain; "hoist it to its place. I don't make preparations to abandon my ship till I've done something to save her. Besides, I want the boat in the safest place if I've got to use it, after all. But I'm not thinking of that yet."

It was not long before the wind was coming out of the northeast in quicker and stronger puffs, and, under every thread of canvas, they began to forge ahead to the dismal clank of the pumps. There was no question of breaking out the cargo, and trying to patch the leak from the inside. It was to be a rush for port, to the music of the pump-brakes.

Medbury and Drew were standing by the port rail at four bells when Captain March came on deck from a study of his chart. He glanced aloft, looked to windward, then at his binnacle.

"Ease the sheets a little, Mr. Medbury," he said, "and keep her off half a point." He gave the course, then added: "Change the men at the pumps every hour; we'll all have to take a hand at it before it's over. The wind's freshening fast, and that's our chance. We've got to carry everything to-night. Call me in an hour."

He was going down the companionway when Medbury called to him.

"That vessel was burned, sir," he said. He held up his hands, blackened with the charred wood.

"You don't say!" exclaimed the captain. "How did that cat happen to escape?""Somehow she got forward, and the fire spread aft. It was the only spot untouched—the forecastle-deck."

"What did you do with her?" asked the captain. "I forgot all about her."

"Oh, I gave her to the steward; she was half-starved."

"All right," said the captain; "all right." Then he went below. It was the last bit of sleep he was to get for many an hour.

With started sheets and a freshening breeze, the brig began the song of the road. The laced foam went hissing past her sides, flecked here and there with spots of phosphorescent light; under her fore-foot was the growl of the heaped-up, rolling wave; now and then the shock of a higher sea, thrown back from her bows in a smother of spray, shook her from stem to stern. The fog had gone with the coming of wind, but the rack, like a flock of birds, swept by overhead. The wind began to sigh and whine in the rigging; with a tremulous, muffled roar the canvas strained and thundered: but through every other noise, insistent, penetrating, sounded the steady thump of the pumps and the rush of water from the spouts.

Once Medbury came aft after changing the men at the pumps, and stopped at the corner of the house to look aloft; he had felt the deck swinging wide under his feet.

"Steady, man! steady!" he called to the man at the wheel. "Don't let her yaw!"

He watched the sails for a moment, turning at last with a sigh of satisfaction to Drew, who was standing near.

"She's picking up her skirts like a little lady," he said. His tone was almost exultant.

"It's good to feel the rush of movement again," said Drew; "but I'm a little bewildered yet, it has come and gone so quickly—this strange experience."

"That's the way with things at sea," replied Medbury. "We're always expecting things to happen, and surprised when they come. But I don't know as it's much different with life in general," he added gloomily. "Trust in nothing—that's the only way to escape being disappointed. Trust in nothing, and be prepared for the worst."

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