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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Coxswain's Bride, by R.M. Ballantyne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Coxswain's Bride
+       also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue
+
+Author: R.M. Ballantyne
+
+Release Date: June 7, 2007 [EBook #21725]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COXSWAIN'S BRIDE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+THE COXSWAIN'S BRIDE, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.
+
+
+
+STORY ONE, CHAPTER 1.
+
+THE RISING TIDE--A TALE OF THE SEA.
+
+The coxswain went by the name of Sturdy Bob among his mates.  Among the
+women of the village he was better known as handsome Bob, and, looking
+at him, you could not help seeing that both titles were appropriate, for
+our coxswain was broad and strong as well as good-looking, with that
+peculiar cast of features and calm decided manner which frequently
+distinguish the men who are born to lead their fellows.
+
+Robert Massey, though quite young, was already a leader of men--not only
+by nature but by profession--being coxswain of the Greyton lifeboat,
+and, truly, the men who followed his lead had need to be made of good
+stuff, with bold, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing spirits, for he often
+led them into scenes of wild--but, hold!  We must not forecast.
+
+Well, we introduce our hero to the reader on a calm September evening,
+which blazed with sunshine.  The sun need not have been mentioned,
+however, but for the fact that it converted the head of a fair-haired
+fisher-girl, seated beside Bob, into a ball of rippling gold, and
+suffused her young cheeks with a glow that rudely intensified her
+natural colour.
+
+She was the coxswain's bride-elect, and up to that date the course of
+their true love had run quite smoothly in spite of adverse proverbs.
+
+"I can't believe my luck," said Bob, gravely.
+
+He said most things gravely, though there was not a man in Greyton who
+could laugh more heartily than he at a good joke.
+
+"What luck do you mean, Bob?" asked Nellie Carr, lifting her eyes from
+the net she was mending, and fixing them on the coxswain's bronzed face
+with an air of charming innocence.  Then, becoming suddenly aware of
+what he meant without being told, she gave vent to a quick little laugh,
+dropped her eyes on the net, and again became intent on repairs.
+
+"To think," continued Bob, taking two or three draws at his short pipe--
+for our hero was not perfect, being, like so many of his class,
+afflicted with the delusion of tobacco!--"to think that there'll be no
+Nellie Carr to-morrow afternoon, only a Mrs Massey!  The tide o' my
+life is risin' fast, Nellie--almost at flood now.  It seems too good to
+be true--"
+
+"Right you are, boy," interrupted a gruff but hearty voice, as a burly
+fisherman "rolled" round the stern of the boat, in front of which the
+lovers were seated on the sand.  "W'en my Moggie an' me was a-coortin'
+we thought, an' said, it was too good to be true, an' so it was;
+leastwise it was too true to be good, for Moggie took me for better an'
+wuss, though it stood to reason I couldn't be both, d'ee see? an' I soon
+found her wuss than better, which--"
+
+"Come, come, Joe Slag," cried Bob, "let's have none o' your ill-omened
+growls to-night.  What brings you here?"
+
+"I've comed for the key o' the lifeboat," returned Slag, with a knowing
+glance at Nellie.  "If the glass ain't tellin' lies we may have use for
+her before long."
+
+Massey pulled the key from his pocket, and gave it to Slag, who was his
+bowman, and who, with the exception of himself, was the best man of the
+lifeboat crew.
+
+"I'll have to follow him," said Bob, rising soon after his mate had
+left, "so good-bye, Nellie, till to-morrow."
+
+He did not stoop to kiss her, for the wide sands lay before them with
+fisher-boys playing thereon--apparently in their fathers' boots and
+sou'-westers--and knots of observant comrades scattered about.
+
+"See that you're not late at church to-morrow, Bob," said the girl, with
+a smile and a warning look.
+
+"Trust me," returned Bob.
+
+As he walked towards the lifeboat-house--a conspicuous little building
+near the pier--he tried to blow off some of the joy in his capacious
+breast, by whistling.
+
+"Why, Slag," he exclaimed on entering the shed, "I do believe you've
+been an' put on the blue ribbon!"
+
+"That's just what I've done, Bob," returned the other.  "I thought you'd
+'ave noticed it at the boat; but I forgot you could see nothin' but the
+blue of Nellie's eyes."
+
+"Of course not.  Who'd expect me to see anything else when I'm beside
+_her_?" retorted Bob.  "But what has made you change your mind?  I'm
+sure the last time I tried to get you to hoist the blue-peter ye were
+obstinate enough--dead against it."
+
+"True, Bob; but since that time I've seed a dear woman that I was fond
+of _die_ from drink, an' I've seed Tom Riley, one of our best men, get
+on the road to ruin through the same; so I've hoisted the blue flag, as
+ye see."
+
+"That's a good job, Slag, but don't you forget, my lad, that the blue
+ribbon won't save you.  There's but _one_ Saviour of men.  Nevertheless,
+it's well to fight our battles under a flag, an' the blue is a good
+one--as things go.  Show your colours and never say die; that's my
+motto.  As you said, Slag, the glass _is_ uncommon low to-day.  I
+shouldn't wonder if there was dirty weather brewin' up somewhere."
+
+The coxswain was right, and the barometer on that occasion was a true
+prophet.  The weather which "brewed up" that evening was more than
+"dirty," it was tempestuous; and before midnight a tremendous hurricane
+was devastating the western shores of the kingdom.  Many a good ship
+fought a hard battle that night with tide and tempest, and many a bad
+one went down.  The gale was short-lived but fierce, and it strewed our
+western shores with wreckage and corpses, while it called forth the
+energies and heroism of our lifeboat and coastguard men from north to
+south.
+
+Driving before the gale that night under close-reefed topsails, a small
+but well-found schooner came careering over the foaming billows from the
+regions of the far south, freighted with merchandise and gold and happy
+human beings.  Happy!  Ay, they were happy, both passengers and crew,
+for they were used by that time to facing and out-riding gales; and was
+not the desired haven almost in sight--home close at hand?
+
+The captain, however, did not share in the general satisfaction.  Out in
+"blue water" he feared no gale, but no one knew better than himself that
+the enemy was about to assail him at his weakest moment--when close to
+land.  No one, however, could guess his thoughts as he stood there upon
+the quarter-deck, clad in oil-skins, drenched with spray, glancing now
+at the compass, now at the sails, or at the scarce visible horizon.
+
+As darkness deepened and tempest increased, the passengers below became
+less cheerful, with the exception of one curly-haired little girl, whose
+exuberant spirit nothing could quell.  Her young widowed mother had
+given in to the little one's importunities, and allowed her to sit up
+late on this the last night at sea, to lend a helping hand while she
+packed up so as to be ready for landing next day.  Consent had been the
+more readily given that the white-haired grandfather of little Lizzie
+volunteered to take care of her and keep her out of mischief.
+
+The other passengers were as yet only subdued, not alarmed.  There were
+men and women and little ones from the Australian cities, rough men from
+the sheep farms, and bronzed men from the gold mines.  All were busy
+making preparations to land on the morrow.  With the exception of those
+preparations things on board went on much as they had been going on in
+"dirty weather" all the voyage through.
+
+Suddenly there was a crash!  Most of the male passengers, knowing well
+what it meant, sprang to the companion-ladder--those of them at least
+who had not been thrown down or paralysed--and rushed on deck.  Shrieks
+and yells burst forth as if in emulation of the howling winds.  Crash
+followed crash, as each billow lifted the doomed vessel, and let her
+fall on the sands with a shock that no structure made by man could long
+withstand.  Next moment a terrific rending overhead told that one, or
+both, of the masts had gone by the board.  At the same time the sea
+found entrance and poured down hatchways and through opening seams in
+cataracts.  The inclined position of the deck showed that she was
+aground.
+
+The very thought of being _aground_ comforted some, for, to their minds,
+it implied nearness to land, and _land_ was, in their idea, safety.
+These simple ones were doomed to terrible enlightenment.  Little Lizzie,
+pale and silent from terror, clung to her grandfather's neck; the young
+widow to his disengaged arm.  With the other arm the old man held on to
+a brass rod, and prevented all three from being swept to leeward, where
+several of the women and children were already struggling to escape from
+a mass of water and wrecked furniture.
+
+"Come on deck--all hands!" shouted a hoarse voice, as one of the
+officers leaped into the cabin, followed by several men, who assisted
+the people to rise.
+
+It is usual to keep passengers below as much as possible in such
+circumstances, but the position of the schooner, with her bow high on a
+bank, and her stern deep in the water, rendered a different course
+needful on this occasion.
+
+With difficulty the passengers were got up to the bow, where they
+clustered and clung about the windlass and other points of vantage.
+Then it was that the true nature of their calamity was revealed, for no
+land was visible, nothing was to be seen around them but a hell of
+raging foam, which, in the almost total darkness of the night, leaped
+and glimmered as if with phosphoric light.  Beyond this circle of, as it
+were, wild lambent flame, all was black, like a wall of ebony, from out
+of which continually there rushed into view coiling, curling,
+hoary-headed monsters, in the shape of roaring billows, which burst upon
+and over them, deluging the decks, and causing the timbers of the ship
+to writhe as if in pain.
+
+"We've got on the tail o' the sands," muttered a sailor to some one as
+he passed, axe in hand, to cut away the wreckage of the masts, which
+were pounding and tugging alongside.
+
+On the sands!  Yes, but no sands were visible, for they had struck on an
+outlying bank, far from shore, over which the ocean swept like the besom
+of destruction.
+
+It was nearly low water at the time of the disaster.  As the tide fell
+the wreck ceased to heave.  Then it became possible for the seamen to
+move about without clinging to shrouds and stanchions for very life.
+
+"Fetch a rocket, Jim," said the captain to one of the men.
+
+Jim obeyed, and soon a whizzing line of light was seen athwart the black
+sky.
+
+"They'll never see it," muttered the first mate, as he got ready another
+rocket.  "Weather's too thick."
+
+Several rockets were fired, and then, to make more sure of attracting
+the lifeboat men, a tar-barrel, fastened to the end of a spar, was
+thrust out ahead and set on fire.  By the grand lurid flare of this
+giant torch the surrounding desolation was made more apparent, and at
+the fearful sight hearts which had hitherto held up began to sink in
+despair.
+
+The mate's fears seemed to be well grounded, for no answering signal was
+seen to rise from the land, towards which every eye was anxiously
+strained.  One hour passed, then another, and another, but still no help
+came.  Then the tide began to rise, and with it, of course, the danger
+to increase.  All this time rockets had been sent up at intervals, and
+tar-barrels had been kept burning.
+
+"We had better make the women and children fast, sir," suggested the
+mate, as a heavy mass of spray burst over the bulwarks and drenched
+them.
+
+"Do so," replied the captain, gathering up a coil of rope to assist in
+the work.
+
+"Is this necessary?" asked the widow, as the captain approached her.
+
+"I fear it is," he replied.  "The tide is rising fast.  In a short time
+the waves will be breaking over us again, and you will run a chance of
+bein' swept away if we don't make you fast.  But don't despair, they
+must have seen our signals by this time, an' we shall soon have the
+lifeboat out."
+
+"God grant it," murmured the widow, fervently, as she strained poor
+little trembling Lizzie to her breast.
+
+But as the moments flew by and no succour came, some gave way altogether
+and moaned piteously, while others appeared to be bereft of all capacity
+of thought or action.  Many began to pray in frantic incoherence, and
+several gave vent to their feelings in curses.  Only a few maintained
+absolute self-possession and silence.  Among these were the widow and
+one or two of the other women.
+
+They were in this condition when one of the crew who had been noted as a
+first-rate singer of sea songs, and the "life of the fo'c's'l," had
+occasion to pass the spot where the passengers were huddled under the
+lee of the starboard bulwarks.
+
+"Is there never a one of ye," he asked, almost sternly, "who can pray
+like a Christian without screechin'?  You don't suppose the Almighty's
+deaf, do you?"
+
+This unexpected speech quieted the noisy ones, and one of the women,
+turning to a man beside her, said, "You pray for us, Joe."
+
+Joe was one of those who had remained, from the first, perfectly still,
+except when required to move, or when those near him needed assistance.
+He was a grave elderly man, whose quiet demeanour, dress, and general
+appearance, suggested the idea of a city missionary--an idea which was
+strengthened when, in obedience to the woman's request, he promptly
+prayed, in measured sentences, yet with intense earnestness, for
+deliverance--first from sin and then from impending death--in the name
+of Jesus.  His petition was very short, and it was barely finished when
+a wave of unusual size struck the vessel with tremendous violence, burst
+over the side and almost swept every one into the sea.  Indeed, it was
+evident that some of the weaker of the party would have perished then if
+they had not been secured to the vessel with ropes.
+
+It seemed like a stern refusal of the prayer, and was regarded as such
+by some of the despairing ones, when a sudden cheer was heard and a
+light resembling a great star was seen to burst from the darkness to
+windward.
+
+"The lifeboat!" shouted the captain, and they cheered with as much
+hearty joy as if they were already safe.
+
+A few minutes more and the familiar blue and white boat of mercy leaped
+out of darkness into the midst of the foaming waters like a living
+creature.
+
+It was the boat from the neighbouring port of Brentley.  Either the
+storm-drift had not been so thick in that direction as in the
+neighbourhood of Greyton, or the Brentley men had kept a better
+look-out.  She had run down to the wreck under sail.  On reaching it--a
+short distant to windward--the sail was lowered, the anchor dropped, the
+cable payed out, and the boat eased down until it was under the lee of
+the wreck.  But the first joy at her appearance quickly died out of the
+hearts of some, who were ignorant of the powers of lifeboats and
+lifeboat men, when the little craft was seen at one moment tossed on the
+leaping foam till on a level with the ship's bulwarks, at the next
+moment far down in the swirling waters under the mizzen chains; now
+sheering off as if about to forsake them altogether; anon rushing at
+their sides with a violence that threatened swift destruction to the
+boat; never for one instant still; always tugging and plunging like a
+mad thing.  "How can we ever get into that?" was the thought that
+naturally sprang into the minds of some, with chilling power.
+
+Those, however, who understood the situation better, had more legitimate
+ground for anxiety, for they knew that the lifeboat, if loaded to its
+utmost capacity, could not carry more than half the souls that had to be
+saved.  On becoming aware of this the men soon began to reveal their
+true characters.  The unselfish and gentle made way for the women and
+children.  The coarse and brutal, casting shame and every manly feeling
+aside, struggled to the front with oaths and curses, some of them even
+using that false familiar motto, "Every man for himself, and God for us
+all!"
+
+But these received a check at the gangway, for there stood the captain,
+revolver in hand.  He spoke but one word--"back," and the cravens slunk
+away.  The mild man who had offered prayer sat on the ship's bulwarks
+calmly looking on.  He understood the limited capacity of the boat, and
+had made up his mind to die.
+
+"Now, madam, make haste," cried the mate, pushing his way towards the
+widow.
+
+"Come, father," she said, holding out her hand; but the old man did not
+move.
+
+"There are more women and little ones," he said, "than the boat can
+hold.  Good-bye, darling.  We shall meet again--up yonder.  Go."
+
+"Never!" exclaimed the widow, springing to his side.  "I will die with
+you, father!  But here, boatman, save, oh, save my child!"
+
+No one attended to her.  At such terrible moments men cannot afford to
+wait on indecision.  Other women were ready and only too glad to go.
+With a sense almost of relief at the thought that separation was now
+impossible, the widow strained the child to her bosom and clung to her
+old father.
+
+At that moment the report of a pistol was heard, and a man fell dead
+upon the deck.  At the last moment he had resolved to risk all and
+rushed to the side, intending to jump into the boat.
+
+"Shove off," was shouted.  The boat shot from the vessel's side.  The
+bowman hauled on the cable.  In a few seconds the oars were shipped, the
+anchor was got in, and the overloaded but insubmergible craft
+disappeared into the darkness out of which it had come.
+
+The wretched people thus left on the wreck knew well that the boat could
+not make her port, land the rescued party, and return for them under
+some hours.  They also knew that the waves were increasing in power and
+volume with the rising water, and that their vessel could not survive
+another tide.  Can we wonder that most of them again gave way to
+despair--forgetting that with God "all things are possible?"
+
+They were not yet forsaken, however.  On the pier-head at Greyton their
+signals had indeed been observed, but while the Brentley boat, owing to
+its position, could run down to the wreck with all sail set, it was
+impossible for that of Greyton to reach it, except by pulling slowly
+against wind and tide.
+
+The instant that Bob Massey saw the flare of the first tar-barrel he had
+called out his men.  One after another they came leaping over the
+rocks--eager for the God-like work of saving life.
+
+It is one of the grand characteristics of our lifeboatmen that on being
+summoned to the fight there are often far more volunteers than are
+required.  Joe Slag, as in duty bound, was first to answer the call.
+Then several of the younger men came running down.  Last of all--almost
+too late--Tom Riley appeared, buckling on his lifebelt as he ran.  His
+gait was not quite steady, and his face was flushed.  The coxswain was
+quick to note these facts.
+
+"Take that lifebelt off!" he said, sternly, when Riley came up.
+
+No need to ask why.  The tippler knew the reason why only too well, and
+he also knew that it was useless, as well as dangerous, to disobey the
+coxswain.  He took off the belt at once, flung it down, and staggered
+away back to his grog-shop.
+
+A powerful young fisherman--who had felt almost heart-broken by being
+refused permission to go for want of room--gladly put on the belt and
+took Riley's place.  Another minute and they were out of the harbour,
+battling with the billows and fighting their way inch by inch against
+the howling blast.  At last they got out so far that they could hoist
+sail and run with a slant for the wreck.
+
+
+
+STORY ONE, CHAPTER 2.
+
+It was daylight by the time the Greyton lifeboat arrived at the scene of
+action, but the thick, spray-charged atmosphere was almost as bad to see
+through as the blackness of night.
+
+"I'm afeared she's gone," shouted Slag to the coxswain, putting his hand
+to his mouth to prevent the words being blown bodily away.
+
+"No--I see her bearing sou'-west," was the brief reply, as Bob Massey
+plied his steering oar.
+
+A few minutes later, and the despairing people on the wreck, catching
+sight of the boat, greeted her with a long, wild cheer of reviving hope.
+
+"What is it?" asked the widow, faintly, for she had been growing
+gradually weaker from prolonged exposure.
+
+"The lifeboat, darling," said her father.  "Did I not say that He would
+not forsake us?"
+
+"Thank God!" murmured the poor woman, fervently.  "Look up, Lizzie; the
+lifeboat is coming to save us!"
+
+The child, who had been comparatively warm and sheltered, at the expense
+of her mother, looked up and smiled.
+
+Soon the boat was alongside, and much the same scene that we have
+already described was re-enacted; but there were no rebels this time.
+By the captain's resolute bearing at first many lives had probably been
+saved.
+
+When most of the people had been lowered into the boat--not without
+great risk and many bruises--the widow, who, cowering with her father
+and child under the forecastle, had been overlooked, was led to the side
+with her child.
+
+"Not together, ma'am," said the captain.  "You'd likely drop her.  Let
+me lower the child down first; or come first yourself--that will be
+better."
+
+"Give Lizzie to me," said the grandfather.  "I'll hold her till you are
+safe, and ready to receive her."
+
+"Look alive, ma'am," urged one of the lifeboat men, who had scrambled on
+deck to render assistance.
+
+The widow was soon in the boat, and held out her arms for little Lizzie.
+Somehow--no one could tell how--the men made a bungle of it.  Perhaps
+the very fear of doing so was the cause.  Instead of being caught by the
+boatmen, Lizzie slipped between the boat and the vessel into the boiling
+sea.  Giving one agonised cry, the grandfather leaped after her, but the
+surging boat swept in at the moment, and the old man fortunately fell
+into that instead of the sea.  He was not hurt, for strong arms had been
+upraised to receive him.  The little child rose above the foam as she
+was whirled past the stern of the boat by a swift current.  Bob Massey
+saw her little out-stretched arms.  There was no time for thought or
+consideration.  With one bound the coxswain was overboard.  Next moment
+the crew saw him far astern with the child in his arms.
+
+"Get 'em all aboard _first_!" came back, even against the wind, in Bob's
+powerful, deep-toned voice.
+
+Another moment, and he was lost to sight in the boiling waste of waters.
+Slag knew well what he meant.  If they should cast off the rope before
+rescuing all, for the purpose of picking up the coxswain, there would be
+no possibility of getting back again to the schooner, for she was fast
+breaking up.  Every current and eddy about these sands was well known to
+Joe Slag, also the set of the tides--besides, had not Bob got on his
+lifebelt?  He felt, nevertheless, that it was a tremendous risk to let
+him go.  But what could poor Slag do?  To cast off at once would have
+been to sacrifice about a dozen lives for the sake of saving two.  It
+was a fearful trial.  Joe loved Bob as a brother.  His heart well nigh
+burst, but it stood the trial.  He did his duty, and held on to the
+wreck!
+
+Duty, on that occasion, however, was done with a promptitude, and in a
+fashion, that was not usual in one of his sedate nature.  Fortunately,
+none but men remained on the wreck by that time.
+
+"Tumble 'em in--sharp!" cried Slag.
+
+The lifeboat men obeyed literally, and tumbled them in with a celerity
+that might almost have awakened surprise in a sack of potatoes!
+
+To haul up the anchor would have been slow work.  Slag--economical by
+nature--became extravagant for once.  An axe made short work of cable
+and anchor.
+
+"Let 'em go!" he growled, as the boat drifted away.
+
+The sail was set with miraculous speed, for now the wind was in their
+favour, and the gay lifeboat bounded off in the direction where Bob had
+disappeared, as though it felt a lively interest in the recovery of its
+coxswain.  It seemed as if the very elements sympathised with their
+anxiety, for just then the gale sensibly abated, and the rising sun
+broke through a rift in the grey clouds.
+
+"There he is--I see him!" shouted the man in the bow--pointing eagerly
+ahead.
+
+"It's on'y a bit o' wreck, boy," cried a comrade.
+
+"Right you are," returned the bowman.
+
+"There he is, though, an' no mistake, this time.  Port!--port!
+hard-a-port!"
+
+As he spoke, the boat swept round into a sort of cross-current among the
+waves, where an object resembling a man was observed spinning slowly
+round like a lazy teetotum.  They were soon alongside.  A dozen
+claw-like hands made a simultaneous grasp, and hauled the object on
+board with a mighty cheer, for it was, indeed, the coxswain--alive,
+though much exhausted--with his precious little curly-haired burden in
+his arms.
+
+The burden was also alive, and not much exhausted, for the weather was
+comparatively warm at the time, and Bob had thrust her little head into
+the luxuriant thicket of his beard and whiskers; and, spreading his
+great hands and arms all over her little body, had also kept her well
+out of the water--all which the great buoyancy of his lifebelt enabled
+him easily to do.
+
+Shall we describe the joy of the widow and the grandfather?  No; there
+are some sacred matters in life which are best left to the imagination.
+The sunshine which had begun to scatter the clouds, and flood both land
+and sea, was typical of the joy which could find no better means than
+sobs wherewith to express gratitude to the God of mercy.
+
+We have said that the gale had begun to abate.  When the lifeboat
+escaped from the turmoil of cross-seas that raged over the sands and got
+into deep water, all difficulties and dangers were past, and she was
+able to lay her course for Greyton harbour.
+
+"Let's have another swig o' that cold tea," said Bob Massey, resuming
+his rightful post at the helm.  "It has done me a power o' good.  I had
+no notion that cold tea was so good for warmin' the cockles o' one's
+heart."
+
+Ah!  Bob Massey, it was not the cold tea, but the saving of that little
+girl that sent the life's blood careering so warmly through your veins!
+However, there's no harm done in putting it down to the credit of the
+cold tea.  Had the tea been hot, there might have been some truth in
+your fancy.
+
+"What's the time?" asked Bob, with a sudden look of anxiety.
+
+"Just gone ten," said Slag, consulting a chronometer that bore some
+resemblance to an antique warming-pan.
+
+The look of anxiety on the coxswain's countenance deepened.
+
+"Ease off the sheet a bit," he said, looking sternly over the weather
+quarter, and whistling for a fresher breeze, though most men would have
+thought the breeze fresh enough already.
+
+As if to accommodate him, and confirm the crew in the whistling
+superstition, the breeze did increase at the moment, and sent the
+lifeboat, as one of the men said, "snorin'" over the wild sea towards
+the harbour of Greyton.
+
+It was a grand sight to behold the pier of the little port on that
+stormy morning.  Of course, it had soon become known that the lifeboat
+was out.  Although at starting it had been seen by only a few of the old
+salts--whose delight it was to recall the memory of grand stormy times
+long past, by facing the gales at all hours in oiled coats and
+sou'-westers--the greater part of the fishing village only became aware
+of the fact on turning out to work in the morning.  We have said that
+the gale had moderated, and the sun had come out, so that the pier was
+crowded, not only with fisher-folk, but with visitors to the port, and
+other landsmen.
+
+Great was the hope, and sanguine the expectation of the crowd, when,
+after long and anxious waiting, the lifeboat was at last descried far
+out at sea, making straight for the harbour.
+
+"All right, Bill," exclaimed an old fisherman, who had been for some
+time past sweeping the horizon with his glass, "the flag's a-flyin'."
+
+"What does that mean?" asked a smart young lady, who had braved the
+blast and run the risk of a salt-wash from the sprays at the pier-end in
+her eager desire to see the boat arrive.
+
+"It means, Miss, that they've managed to save somebody--how many, in
+course, we can't tell till they come."
+
+There was a strong disposition on the part of the crowd to cheer when
+this was said.
+
+After a few minutes' further observation, the old man with the glass
+murmured, as if speaking to himself, "I do believe she's chock-full o'
+people."
+
+When this was repeated, the suppressed cheer broke forth, and the
+excitement increased.  Soon the people with good eyes could see for
+themselves that the swiftly approaching boat was as full as she could
+hold, of human beings.  At the same time, those who were in the boat
+could see the swarms of sympathisers on the pier who awaited their
+arrival.
+
+But there was one man who took no note of these things, and seemed
+indifferent to everything around him.  The coxswain of the lifeboat was
+spiritually absent from the scene.
+
+"You seem to've got the fidgets, Bob," remarked Joe Slag, looking
+earnestly at his friend.  "That swim has been too much for 'ee."
+
+"'Taint that, Joe," replied Bob, quickly.  "What's the time now, lad?"
+
+Pulling out the antique warming-pan again, Slag said it was nigh a
+quarter past ten, and added that he, (Bob), seemed to be "uncommon
+consarned about the time o' day that mornin'."
+
+"And so would you be, lad," returned the coxswain, in a low voice, as he
+advanced his mouth to his comrade's ear, "if you was in my fix.  I've
+got to be spliced this day before twelve, an' the church is more'n two
+miles inland!"
+
+"That's awk'ard," returned Slag, with a troubled look.  "But, I say,
+Bob, you've kep' this uncommon close from us all--eh?  I never heerd ye
+was to be spliced so soon."
+
+"Of course I kep' it close, 'cos I wanted to give you an' my mates a
+surprise, but it strikes me I'll give some other people a surprise
+to-day, for there's no time to put on clean toggery."
+
+"You'll never manage it," said Slag, in a sympathetic tone, as he once
+more consulted the warming-pan.  "It's gettin' on for half arter ten
+now, an' it takes a mortal time to rig out in them go-to-meetin' slops."
+
+"Do I look anything like a bridegroom as I am?" asked the coxswain with
+a curious glance.
+
+"Sca'cely," replied Slag, surveying his friend with a grim smile--"(mind
+your helm, Bob, there's a awk'ard run on the tide round the pier-head,
+you know.)  No; you're not wery much like one.  Even if your toggery was
+all ship-shape--which it ain't--it would stand dryin', and your hair
+would be the better o' brushin'--to say nothin' o' your beard--an' it do
+seem, too, as if a bit o' soap might improve your hands an' face arter
+last night's work.  No, Bob, I couldn't honestly say as you're exactly
+ship-shape as you stand."
+
+"Listen, Joe Slag," said Bob Massey, with sudden earnestness.  "I've
+never yet come in after a rescue without seein' the boat hauled up an'
+made snug.  `Dooty first, an' pleasure arter,' that's bin my motto, as
+_you_ know.  But dooty lies in another direction _this_ day, so you
+promise to see her hauled up, an' cleaned, an' properly housed, won't
+you?"
+
+"In coorse I does."
+
+"Well, then," continued Bob, in the same low, earnest tone, "arter
+that's done, you'll go an' invite all our mates an' friends to a jolly
+blow-out in the big shed alongside o' my old mother's house.  Don't tell
+who invites 'em, or anything about it, an' ask as many as like to come--
+the shed's big enough to hold 'em all.  Only be sure to make 'em
+understand that they'll get no drink stronger than coffee an' tea.  If
+they can't enjoy themselves on that, they may go to the grog-shop, but
+they needn't come to _me_.  My mother will be there, and she'll keep 'em
+in order!"
+
+"What!" exclaimed Slag, with a look of slight surprise.  "Your mother!
+Her what's bin bed-ridden for years, an' hasn't got no legs at all--
+leastwise not to speak of?"
+
+"Just so, lad.  We'll lift her in, bed an' all.  Now you be off to the
+bow.  Oars out, lads; stand by the halyards!"
+
+They were by that time close to the pier-head, where the people were
+shouting and cheering, some of them even weeping, and waving hats,
+'kerchiefs, sticks, and umbrellas, almost wild with joy at seeing so
+many fellow-creatures rescued from the maw of the hungry sea.
+
+The first man who leaped out when the lifeboat touched the pier was the
+coxswain, dripping, dirty, and dishevelled.
+
+"Bless you, my gallant fellow!" exclaimed an irrepressible old
+enthusiast, stepping forward and attempting to grasp the coxswain's
+hand.
+
+But Bob Massey, brushing past him, ran along the pier, leaped a fence,
+and sprang up the steep path that led to the cliffs, over the top of
+which he was finally seen to bound and disappear.
+
+"Poor fellow!" exclaimed the irrepressible enthusiast, looking aghast at
+Slag, "exposure and excitement have driven him mad!"
+
+"Looks like it!" replied Slag, with a quiet grin, as he stooped to
+assist the widow and little Lizzie to land, while ready hands were
+out-stretched to aid and congratulate the old grandfather, and the rest
+of the rescued people.
+
+The coxswain ran--ay, he ran as he had been wont to run when he was a
+wild little fisher-boy--regardless alike of appearances and
+consequences.  The clock of the village steeple told him that the
+appointed hour had almost arrived.  Two miles was a long way to run in
+heavy woollen garments and sea-boots, all soaked in sea-water.  But Bob
+was young, and strong, and active, and--you understand the rest, good
+reader!
+
+The church had purposely been selected at that distance from the village
+to prevent Bob's comrades from knowing anything about the wedding until
+it should be over.  It was a somewhat strange fancy, but the coxswain
+was a man who, having taken a fancy, was not easily turned from it.
+
+In order to her being got comfortably ready in good time, Nellie Carr
+had slept the night before at the house of an uncle, who was a farmer,
+and lived near the church.  The house was in a sheltered hollow, so that
+the bride was scarcely aware of the gale that had been blowing so
+fiercely out at sea.  Besides, being much taken up with
+cousin-bridesmaids and other matters, the thought of the lifeboat never
+once entered her pretty head.
+
+At the appointed hour, arrayed in all the splendour of a fisherman's
+bride, she was led to the church, but no bridegroom was there!
+
+"He won't be long.  He's _never_ late," whispered a bridesmaid to
+anxious Nellie.
+
+Minutes flew by, and Nellie became alarmed.  The clergyman also looked
+perplexed.
+
+"Something must have happened," said the farmer-uncle, apologetically.
+
+Watches were consulted and compared.
+
+At that moment a heavy rapid tread was heard outside.  Another moment,
+and Bob Massey sprang into the church, panting, flushed, dirty, wet,
+wild, and, withal, grandly savage.
+
+"Nellie!" he exclaimed, stopping short, with a joyful gaze of
+admiration, for he had never seen her so like an angel before.
+
+"Bob!" she cried in alarm, for she had never before seen him so like a
+reprobate.
+
+"Young man," began the clergyman, sternly, but he got no further; for,
+without paying any attention to him whatever, Bob strode forward and
+seized Nellie's hands.
+
+"I dursen't kiss ye, Nell, for I'm all wet; but I hadn't one moment to
+change.  Bin out all night i' the lifeboat an' saved over thirty souls.
+The Brentley boat's done as much.  I'm ashamed, sir," he added, turning
+to the clergyman, "for comin' here like this; but I couldn't help it.  I
+hope there's nothin' in Scriptur' agin' a man bein' spliced in wet
+toggery?"
+
+Whether the clergyman consulted his Cruden's Concordance with a view to
+clear up that theological question, we have never been able to
+ascertain; but it is abundantly clear that he did not allow the
+coxswain's condition to interfere with the ceremony, for in the _Greyton
+Journal_, of next day, there appeared a paragraph to the following
+effect:
+
+  "The marriage of Robert Massey, the heroic coxswain of our lifeboat,
+  (which, with all its peculiar attendant circumstances, and the gallant
+  rescue that preceded it, will be found in another part of this day's
+  issue), was followed up in the afternoon by a feast, and what we may
+  style a jollification, which will live long in the memory of our
+  fisher-folk.
+
+  "Several circumstances combined to render this wedding-feast unique.
+  To say nothing of the singular beauty of the bride, who is well known
+  as one of the most thrifty and modest girls in the town, and the
+  stalwart appearance of our coxswain, who, although so young, has
+  already helped to save hundreds of human lives from the raging sea,
+  the gathering was graced by the presence of the bridegroom's
+  bed-ridden mother.  Old Mrs Massey had been carried in, bed and all,
+  to the scene of festivity; and it is due to the invalid to state that,
+  despite rheumatics and the singularity of her position, she seemed to
+  enjoy herself exceedingly.  Besides this, the friends and comrades of
+  the coxswain--backed by the enthusiastic groomsman, Joe Slag--would
+  not permit Massey to don wedding garments, but insisted on his dancing
+  himself dry, in the rough garb in which he had effected the rescue.
+  This he had no difficulty in doing, having already run himself more
+  than half dry in hastening from the lifeboat to the church, which
+  latter he reached only just in time.
+
+  "The little girl whom Massey personally saved was also present, with
+  her mother and grandfather; and one interesting episode of the evening
+  was the presentation to our coxswain of a gold watch and a purse of
+  fifty sovereigns by the grateful old grandfather.  Another peculiarity
+  of the proceedings was that Massey insisted--although the clergyman
+  was present--on his old mother asking God's blessing on the feast
+  before it began.  All who are acquainted with our liberal-minded vicar
+  will easily understand that he highly approved of the arrangement.
+
+  "To crown all, the feast was conducted on strictly teetotal
+  principles.  We have frequently advocated the principles of total
+  abstinence in these columns--at least for the young, the healthy, and
+  the strong--and we are glad to acknowledge that this wedding has
+  greatly helped our cause; for the fun and hilarity in all, the vigour
+  of limb in dancing, and of lung in singing--in short, the general
+  jollity--could not have been surpassed if the guests had been swilling
+  rivers of beer and brandy, instead of oceans of tea.  Yes, as one of
+  the Irish guests remarked, `It was a great occasion intoirely,' and it
+  will be long before the event is forgotten, for the noble deeds of our
+  Greyton lifeboat are, from this day forward, intimately and
+  inseparably connected with her coxswain's wedding!"
+
+Thus spake the Greyton oracle; but, prophet though that journal
+professed to be, the oracle failed to discern that from that time
+forward the names of Robert Massey and Joe Slag would very soon cease to
+be connected with the Greyton lifeboat.
+
+
+
+STORY ONE, CHAPTER 3.
+
+Soon after the wedding recorded in the last chapter an event occurred
+which entirely altered the character and current of our coxswain's
+career, at least for a time.  This was the sudden death of the
+bed-ridden old mother, who had played such an interesting part at the
+wedding-feast.
+
+To our hero, who was a tender-hearted man, and a most affectionate son,
+the blow was almost overwhelming, although long expected.
+
+"I don't think I can stay here much longer," he said one evening to his
+pretty wife, as they sat together outside their door and watched the
+village children romping on the sands; "everything minds me o' the dear
+old woman, an' takes the heart out me.  If it wasn't for you, Nell, I'd
+have been off to the other side o' the world long before now, but I find
+it hard to think o' takin' you away from all your old friends and
+playmates--and your Aunt Betty."
+
+A peculiar smile lit up Nellie's face as her husband concluded.
+
+"I should be sorry to leave the old friends here," she replied, "but
+don't let that hinder you if ye want to go away.  I'd leave everything
+to please you, Bob.  And as to Aunt Betty--well, I'm not ungrateful, I
+hope, but--but _she_ wouldn't break her heart at partin' wi' _me_."
+
+"Right you are, Nell, as you always was, and always will be," said
+Massey.  He laughed a short, dry laugh, and was grave again.
+
+It was quite evident that Aunt Betty would not be a hindrance to the
+departure of either of them and no wonder, for Betty had received Nellie
+Carr into her family with a bad grace when her widowed brother, "old
+Carr," died, leaving his only child without a home.  From that day Betty
+had brought the poor little orphan up--or, rather, had scolded and
+banged her up--until Bob Massey relieved her of the charge.  To do Aunt
+Betty justice, she scolded and banged up her own children in the same
+way; but for these--her own young ones--she entertained and expressed a
+species of affection which mankind shares in common with cats, while for
+Nellie Carr she had no such affection, and contrived to make the fact
+abundantly plain.  As we not infrequently find in such circumstances,
+the favoured children--which numbered seven--became heart-breakers,
+while the snubbed one turned out the flower of the flock.
+
+"Then you're sure you won't think it hard, Nell, if I ask you to leave
+home and friends and go wi' me over the sea?"
+
+"Yes, Bob, I'm quite sure.  I'm willin' to follow you to the end o' the
+world, or further if that's possible!"
+
+"Then the thing's settled," said Massey, with decision, rising and
+thrusting his short pipe into his vest pocket, the lining of which had
+already been twice renewed in consequence of the inroads of that
+half-extinguished implement.
+
+In pursuance of his "settled" purpose, our coxswain proceeded to the
+lifeboat-shed in search of his bowman, Joe Slag, and found him there.
+
+"Joe," said he, in the quiet tone that was habitual to him, "Nell and I
+have made up our minds to go to Australia."
+
+"To Austrailly!" exclaimed Slag, leaning his arms on the mop with which
+he had been washing down the lifeboat.
+
+"Ay; I can't settle to work nohow since the dear old woman went away;
+so, as Nell is agreeable, and there's nothin' to keep me here, I've
+decided to up anchor and bear away for the southern seas."
+
+The bowman had seated himself on a cask while his friend was speaking,
+and gazed at him with a bewildered air.
+
+"Are 'ee in arnest, Bob?"
+
+"Ay, Joe, in dead earnest."
+
+"An' you say that you've nothin' to keep you here!  What's this?" said
+Slag, laying his strong hand tenderly on the blue side of the boat.
+
+"Well, I'll be sorry to leave _her_, of course, an all my friends in
+Greyton, but friends will get along well enough without me, an' as for
+the boat, she'll never want a good coxswain while Joe Slag's alive an'
+well."
+
+"You're wrong there, mate," returned the bowman, quickly, while a look
+of decision overspread his bluff countenance, "there'll be both a noo
+cox'n and a noo bowman wanted for her before long, for as sure as the
+first goes away the tother follers."
+
+"Nonsense, Joe; you're jokin' now."
+
+"Yes, I'm jokin' if _you're_ jokin'; otherwise, I'm in dead arnest too--
+in as dead arnest as yourself, if not deader.  Wasn't you an' me born on
+the same day, Bob?  Didn't our mothers crow over us cheek by jowl when
+we was babbies?  Haven't we rollicked together on the shore ever since
+we was the height of our daddies' boots, an' gone fishin' in company,
+fair weather an' foul, to the present hour, to say nothin' o' the times
+we've lent a hand to rescue men an' women an' child'n i' the lifeboat?
+No, no, Bob Massey! if you lay yer course for Austrailly, Joseph Slag
+follers, as sure as a gun."
+
+Finding that his comrade was in downright earnest, and possessed of a
+will as inflexible as his own, Bob made no effort to dissuade him from
+his purpose.  On the contrary, he approved of the determination, for he
+was pleased at the unexpected demonstration of affection which his
+announcement had called forth in one who was by nature undemonstrative,
+and who, having thus given vent to his aroused feelings, quickly resumed
+the reserve from which he had been so suddenly drawn out.  Massey,
+therefore, shook hands with him, by way of sealing an unspoken compact
+of eternal friendship, and suggested that they should proceed together
+to the office of an emigration agent, who had recently made his
+appearance in the village.
+
+In the office they found a very small boy, with an air of
+self-possession that would have been suitable in his grandfather.
+
+"Is the agent in?" asked the coxswain.
+
+"Yes, but engaged.  Sit down; he'll attend to you directly."
+
+The lifeboat men obeyed, almost sheepishly, the one speculating as to
+whether highly developed precocity was not almost criminal, the other
+wondering how such a boy would look and act if obliged to undergo the
+process of being rescued--say by the hair of his head--from a wreck.
+
+Their minds were diverted from this subject of contemplation by the
+entrance of a man and woman.  These, like themselves, were told to sit
+down and wait.  The man was long, thin, and lugubrious.  The woman
+short, slight, and lackadaisical, though rather pretty.
+
+Evidently the agent was a busy man, for he kept them waiting some time.
+When he at length appeared he almost took the breath away from his
+visitors, by the rapid and enthusiastic way in which he described the
+advantages of the great island on the other side of the globe.  There
+was gold--yes, _enormous_ quantities of gold in all directions.  There
+was land of the finest quality to be had for next to nothing; work for
+all who were blessed with good bone and muscle; a constant demand for
+labour--skilled or unskilled--at high wages; a climate such as the
+Olympian gods might revel in, and--in short, if all England had heard
+the oration delivered by that man, and had believed it, the country
+would, in less than a month, have been depopulated of its younger men
+and women, and left to the tender mercies of the old and middle-aged.
+
+Our two fishermen were captivated.  So were the lugubrious man and his
+mild little wife.  The end of it was that, three weeks later, these
+four, with many other men and women of all ranks and conditions, found
+themselves on board the good ship _Lapwing_, ploughing their way through
+the billows of the broad Atlantic Ocean bound for the sunny isles of the
+Antipodes.
+
+Wheels within wheels--worlds within worlds--seems to be the order of
+nature everywhere.  Someone has written, with more of truth than
+elegance--
+
+  "Big fleas have little fleas upon their legs to bite 'em,
+  And little fleas have lesser fleas--and so _ad infinitum_."
+
+One's native land is to millions of people the world in which their
+thoughts centre, and by which they are circumscribed.  A farmer's
+homestead is the world to him, and one of the farmer's cheeses contains
+a mighty world in itself.  But the most complete, compact, and exclusive
+world in existence, perhaps, is a ship at sea--especially an emigrant
+ship--for here we find an epitome of the great world itself.  Here may
+be seen, in small compass, the operations of love and hate, of wisdom
+and stupidity, of selfishness and self-sacrifice, of pride, passion,
+coarseness, urbanity, and all the other virtues and vices which tend to
+make the world at large--a mysterious compound of heaven and hell.
+
+Wherever men and women--not to mention children--are crowded into small
+space, friction ensues, and the inevitable result is moral electricity,
+positive and negative--chiefly positive!  Influences naturally follow,
+pleasant and unpleasant--sometimes explosions, which call for the
+interference of the captain or officer in charge of the deck at the time
+being.
+
+For instance, Tomlin is a fiery but provident man, and has provided
+himself with a deck-chair--a most important element of comfort on a long
+voyage.  Sopkin is a big sulky and heedless man, and has provided
+himself with no such luxury.  A few days after leaving port Sopkin finds
+Tomlin's chair on deck, empty, and, being ignorant of social customs at
+sea, seats himself thereon.  Tomlin, coming on deck, observes the fact,
+and experiences sudden impulses in his fiery spirit.  The electricity is
+at work.  If it were allowable to venture on mental analysis, we might
+say that Tomlin's sense of justice is violated.  It is not fair that he
+should be expected to spend money in providing comforts for any man,
+much less for a man who carelessly neglects to provide them for himself.
+His sense of propriety is shocked, for Sopkin has taken possession
+without asking leave.  His self-esteem is hurt, for, although Sopkin
+knows it is his chair, he sits there doggedly, "like a big brute as he
+is," and does not seem to care what Tomlin thinks or how he looks.
+Besides, there is thrust upon Tomlin the disagreeable necessity of
+claiming his own, and that, too, in a gentlemanly tone and manner--for
+it will not do to assume beforehand that Sopkin is going to refuse
+restitution.  Tomlin is not aware that he thinks all this, but he knows
+that he feels it, and, in spite of himself, demands his property in a
+tone and with a look that sets agoing the electrical current in Sopkin,
+who replies, in a growling tone, "it is _my_ chair just now."
+
+Ordinary men would remonstrate in a case of this kind, or explain, but
+Tomlin is not ordinary.  He is fiery.  Seizing the back of his property,
+he hitches it up, and, with a deft movement worthy of a juggler,
+deposits the unreasonable Sopkin abruptly on the deck!  Sopkin leaps up
+with doubled fists.  Tomlin stands on guard.  Rumkin, a presumptuous
+man, who thinks it his special mission in life to set everything wrong
+right, rushes between them, and is told by both to "mind his own
+business."  The interruption, however, gives time to the captain to
+interfere; he remarks in a mild tone, not unmixed with sarcasm, that
+rough skylarking is not appropriate in the presence of ladies, and that
+there is a convenient fo'c's'l to which the gentlemen may retire when
+inclined for such amusement.
+
+There is a something in the captain's look and manner which puts out the
+fire of Tomlin's spirit, and reduces the sulky Sopkin to obedience,
+besides overawing the presumptuous Rumkin, and from that day forth there
+is among the passengers a better understanding of the authority of a sea
+captain, and the nature of the unwritten laws that exist, more or less,
+on ship-board.
+
+We have referred to an incident of the quarter-deck, but the same laws
+and influences prevailed in the forepart of the vessel, in which our
+coxswain and his friend had embarked.
+
+It was the evening of the fifth day out, and Massey, Joe Slag, the long
+lugubrious man, whose name was Mitford, and his pretty little
+lackadaisical wife, whose name was Peggy, were seated at one end of a
+long mess-table having supper--a meal which included tea and bread and
+butter, as well as salt junk, etcetera.
+
+"You don't seem quite to have recovered your spirits yet, Mitford," said
+Massey to the long comrade.  "Have a bit o' pork?  There's nothin' like
+that for givin' heart to a man."
+
+"Ay, 'specially arter a bout o' sea-sickness," put in Slag, who was
+himself busily engaged with a mass of the proposed remedy.  "It 'ud do
+yer wife good too.  Try it, ma'am.  You're not half yerself yit.
+There's too much green round your eyes an' yaller about yer cheeks for a
+healthy young ooman."
+
+"Thank you, I--I'd rather not," said poor Mrs Mitford, with a faint
+smile--and, really, though faint, and called forth in adverse
+circumstances, it was a very sweet little smile, despite the
+objectionable colours above referred to.  "I was never a great 'and with
+victuals, an' I find that the sea don't improve appetite--though, after
+all, I can't see why it should, and--"
+
+Poor Mrs Mitford stopped abruptly, for reasons best known to herself.
+She was by nature rather a loquacious and, so to speak, irrelevant
+talker.  She delivered herself in a soft, unmeaning monotone, which,
+like "the brook," flowed "on for ever"--at least until some desperate
+listener interrupted her discourteously.  In the present instance it was
+her own indescribable feelings which interrupted her.
+
+"Try a bit o' plum-duff, Mrs Mitford," suggested Massey, with
+well-intentioned sincerity, holding up a lump of the viand on his fork.
+
+"Oh! please--don't!  Some tea!  Quick!  I'll go--"
+
+And she went.
+
+"Poor Peggy, she never _could_ stand much rough an' tumble," said her
+husband, returning from the berth to which he had escorted his wife, and
+seating himself again at the table.  "She's been very bad since we left,
+an' don't seem to be much on the mend."
+
+He spoke as one who not only felt but required sympathy--and he got it.
+
+"Och! niver give in," said the assistant cook, who had overheard the
+remark in passing.  "The ould girl'll be all right before the end o'
+this wake.  It niver lasts more nor tin days at the outside.  An' the
+waker the patients is, the sooner they comes round; so don't let yer
+sperrits down, Mr Mitford."
+
+"Thank 'ee, kindly, Terrence, for your encouragin' words; but I'm
+doubtful.  My poor Peggy is so weak and helpless!"
+
+He sighed, shook his head as he concluded, and applied himself with such
+energy to the plum-duff that it was evident he expected to find refuge
+from his woes in solid food.
+
+"You don't seem to be much troubled wi' sickness yourself," remarked
+Massey, after eyeing the lugubrious man for some time in silence.
+
+"No, I am not, which is a blessin'.  I hope that Mrs Massey ain't ill?"
+
+"No; my Nell is never ill," returned the coxswain, in a hearty tone.
+"She'd have been suppin' along with us to-night, but she's nursin' that
+poor sick lad, Ian Stuart, that's dyin'."
+
+"Is the lad really dyin'?" asked Mitford, laying down his knife and
+fork, and looking earnestly into his companion's face.
+
+"Well, it looks like it.  The poor little fellow seemed to me past
+recoverin' the day he came on board, and the stuffy cabin, wi' the
+heavin' o' the ship, has bin over much for him."
+
+While he was speaking Nellie herself came softly to her husband's side
+and sat down.  Her face was very grave.
+
+"The doctor says there's no hope," she said.  "The poor boy may last a
+few days, so he tells us, but he may be taken away at any moment.  Pour
+me out a cup o' tea, Bob.  I must go back to him immediately.  His poor
+mother is so broken down that she's not fit to attend to him, and the
+father's o' no use at all.  He can only go about groanin'.  No wonder;
+Ian is their only child, Bob--their first-born.  I can't bear to think
+of it."
+
+"But you'll break down yourself, Nell, if you go nursin' him every
+night, an' all night, like this.  Surely there's some o' the women on
+board that'll be glad to lend a helpin' hand."
+
+"I know _one_ who'll be only too happy to do that, whether she's well or
+ill," said Mitford, rising with unwonted alacrity, and hastening to his
+wife's berth.
+
+Just then the bo's'n's stentorian voice was heard giving the order to
+close reef tops'ls, and the hurried tramping of many feet on the deck
+overhead, coupled with one or two heavy lurches of the ship, seemed to
+justify the assistant cook's remark--"Sure it's durty weather we're
+goin' to have, annyhow."
+
+
+
+STORY ONE, CHAPTER 4.
+
+The indications of bad weather which had been observed were not
+misleading, for it not only became what Terrence O'Connor had termed
+"durty," but it went on next day to develop a regular gale, insomuch
+that every rag of canvas, except storm-sails, had to be taken in and the
+hatches battened down, thus confining the passengers to the cabins.
+
+These passengers looked at matters from wonderfully different points of
+view, and felt accordingly.  Surroundings had undoubtedly far greater
+influence on some of them than was reasonable.  Of course we refer to
+the landsmen only.  In the after-cabin, where all was light, cosy, and
+comfortable, and well fastened, and where a considerable degree of
+propriety existed, feelings were comparatively serene.  Most of the
+ladies sought the retirement of berths, and became invisible, though not
+necessarily inaudible; a few, who were happily weather-proof, jammed
+themselves into velvety corners, held on to something fixed, and lost
+themselves in books.  The gentlemen, linking themselves to articles of
+stability, did the same, or, retiring to an appropriate room, played
+cards and draughts and enveloped themselves in smoke.  Few, if any of
+them, bestowed much thought on the weather.  Beyond giving them,
+occasionally, a little involuntary exercise, it did not seriously affect
+them.
+
+Very different was the state of matters in the steerage.  There the
+difference in comfort was not proportioned to the difference in
+passage-money.  There was no velvet, not much light, little space to
+move about, and nothing soft.  In short, discomfort reigned, so that the
+unfortunate passengers could not easily read, and the falling of tin
+panikins and plates, the crashing of things that had broken loose, the
+rough exclamations of men, and the squalling of miserable children,
+affected the nerves of the timid to such an extent that they naturally
+took the most gloomy view of the situation.
+
+Of course the mere surroundings had no influence whatever on the views
+held by Bob Massey and Joe Slag.
+
+"My dear," said the latter, in a kindly but vain endeavour to comfort
+Mrs Mitford, "rumpusses below ain't got nothin' to do wi' rows
+overhead--leastways they're only an effect, not a cause."
+
+"There! there's another," interrupted Mrs Mitford, with a little
+scream, as a tremendous crash of crockery burst upon her ear.
+
+"Well, my dear," said Slag, in a soothing, fatherly tone, "if all the
+crockery in the ship was to go in universal smash into the lee scuppers,
+it couldn't make the wind blow harder."
+
+Poor Mrs Mitford failed to derive consolation from this remark.  She
+was still sick enough to be totally and hopelessly wretched, but not
+sufficiently so to be indifferent to life or death.  Every superlative
+howl of the blast she echoed with a sigh, and each excessive plunge of
+the ship she emphasised with a weak scream.
+
+"I don't know what _you_ think," she said, faintly, when two little boys
+rolled out of their berths and went yelling to leeward with a mass of
+miscellaneous rubbish, "but it do seem to be as if the end of the world
+'ad come.  Not that the sea _could_ be the end of the world, for if it
+was, of course it would spill over and then we would be left dry on the
+bottom--or moist, if not dry.  I don't mean that, you know, but these
+crashes are so dreadful, an' my poor 'ead is like to split--which the
+planks of this ship will do if they go on creakin' so.  I _know_ they
+will, for 'uman-made things can't--"
+
+"You make your mind easy, my woman," said her husband, coming forward at
+the moment and sitting down to comfort her.  "Things are lookin' a
+little better overhead, so one o' the men told me, an' I heard Terrence
+say that we're goin' to have lobscouse for dinner to-day, though what
+that may be I can't tell--somethin' good, I suppose."
+
+"Something thick, an' luke-warm, an' greasy, _I_ know," groaned Peggy,
+with a shudder.
+
+There was a bad man on board the ship.  There usually is a bad man on
+board of most ships; sometimes more than one.  But this one was
+unusually bad, and was, unfortunately, an old acquaintance of the
+Mitfords.  Indeed, he had been a lover of Mrs Mitford, when she was
+Peggy Owen, though her husband knew nothing of that.  If Peggy had known
+that this man--Ned Jarring by name--was to be a passenger, she would
+have prevailed on her husband to go by another vessel; but she was not
+aware of it until they met in the fore-cabin the day after leaving port.
+
+Being a dark-haired, sallow-complexioned man, he soon became known on
+board by the name of Black Ned.  Like many bad men, Jarring was a
+drunkard, and, when under the influence of liquor, was apt to act
+incautiously as well as wickedly.  On the second day of the gale he
+entered the fore-cabin with unsteady steps, and looked round with an air
+of solemn stupidity.  Besides being dark and swarthy, he was big and
+strong, and had a good deal of the bully in his nature.  Observing that
+Mrs Mitford was seated alone in a dark corner of the cabin with a still
+greenish face and an aspect of woe, he staggered towards her, and,
+sitting down, took her hand affectionately.
+
+"Dear Peggy," he began, but he got no further, for the little woman
+snatched her hand away, sprang up, and confronted him with a look of
+blazing indignation.  Every trace of her sickness vanished as if by
+magic.  The greenish complexion changed to crimson, and the woebegone
+tones to those of firm resolution, as she exclaimed--
+
+"Ned Jarring, if you ever again dare to take liberties with _me_, I'll
+tell my 'usband, I will; an' as sure as you're a-sittin' on that seat
+'e'll twist you up, turn you outside in, an' fling you overboard!"
+
+Little Mrs Mitford did not wait for a response, but, turning sharply
+round, left the cabin with a stride which, for a woman of her size and
+character, was most impressive.
+
+Jarring gazed after her with an expression of owlish and unutterable
+surprise on his swarthy countenance.  Then he smiled faintly at the
+unexpected and appalling--not to say curious--fate that awaited him; but
+reflecting that, although lugubrious and long, Mitford was deep-chested,
+broad-shouldered, and wiry, he became grave again, shook his head, and
+had the sense to make up his mind never again to arouse the slumbering
+spirit of Peggy Mitford.
+
+It was a wild scene that presented itself to the eyes of the passengers
+in the _Lapwing_ when the hatches were at last taken off, and they were
+permitted once more to go on deck.  Grey was the prevailing colour.  The
+great seas, which seemed unable to recover from the wild turmoil into
+which they had been lashed, were of a cold greenish grey, flecked and
+tipped with white.  The sky was steely grey with clouds that verged on
+black; and both were so mingled together that it seemed as if the little
+vessel were imbedded in the very heart of a drizzling, heaving, hissing
+ocean.
+
+The coxswain's wife stood leaning on her stalwart husband's arm, by the
+foremast, gazing over the side.
+
+"It do seem more dreary than I expected," she said.  "I wouldn't be a
+sailor, Bob, much as I've bin used to the sea, an' like it."
+
+"Ah, Nell, that's 'cause you've only bin used to the _sea-shore_.  You
+haven't bin long enough on blue water, lass, to know that folks'
+opinions change a good deal wi' their feelin's.  Wait till we git to the
+neighbour'ood o' the line, wi' smooth water an' blue skies an' sunshine,
+sharks, and flyin' fish.  You'll have a different opinion then about the
+sea."
+
+"Right you are, Bob," said Joe Slagg, coming up at that moment.  "Most
+people change their opinions arter gittin' to the line, specially when
+it comes blazin' hot, fit to bile the sea an' stew the ship, an' a dead
+calm gits a hold of 'e an' keeps ye swelterin' in the doldrums for a
+week or two."
+
+"But it wasn't that way we was lookin' at it, Joe," returned Nellie,
+with a laugh.  "Bob was explainin' to me how pleasant a change it would
+be after the cold grey sea an' sky we're havin' just now."
+
+"Well, it may be so; but whatever way ye may look at it, you'll change
+yer mind, more or less, when you cross the line.  By the way, that minds
+me that some of us in the steerage are invited to cross the line
+to-night--the line that separates us from the cabin--to attend a lectur'
+there--an' you'll niver guess the subjec', Bob."
+
+"I know that, Joe.  I never made a right guess in my life, that I knows
+on.  Heave ahead, what is it?"
+
+"A lectur' on the `Lifeboat,' no less!  But it aint our lifeboat
+sarvice: it's the American one, cause it's to be given by that fine
+young fellow, Dr Hayward, who looks as if suthin' had damaged his
+constitootion somehow.  I'm told he's a Yankee, though he looks uncommon
+like an Englishman."
+
+"He's tall an' 'andsome enough, anyhow," remarked Massey.
+
+"Ay, an' he's good enough for anything," said Nellie, with enthusiasm.
+"You should see the kind way he speaks to poor Ian when he comes to see
+him--which is pretty much every day.  He handles him, too, so tenderly--
+just like his mother; but he won't give him medicine or advice, for it
+seems that wouldn't be thought fair by the ship's doctor.  No more it
+would, I suppose."
+
+"D'ee know what's the matter wi' him?" asked Mitford, who had joined the
+group.
+
+"Not I," returned Massey.  "It seems more like gineral weakness than
+anything else."
+
+"I can tell you," said a voice close to them.  The voice was that of
+Tomlin, who, although a first-class passenger, was fond of visiting and
+fraternising with the people of the fore-cabin.  "He got himself
+severely wounded some time ago when protecting a poor slave-girl from
+her owner, and he's now slowly recovering.  He is taking a long voyage
+for his health.  The girl, it seems, had run away from her owner, and
+had nearly escaped into Canada, where of course, being on British soil,
+she would be free--"
+
+"God bless the British soil!" interrupted little Mrs Mitford, in a tone
+of enthusiasm which caused a laugh all round; but that did not prevent
+some of the bystanders from responding with a hearty "Amen!"
+
+"I agree with you, Mrs Mitford," said Tomlin; "but the owner of the
+poor slave did not think as you and I do.  The girl was a quadroon--that
+is, nearly, if not altogether, white.  She was also very beautiful.
+Well, the owner--a coarse brute--with two followers, overtook the
+runaway slave near a lonely roadside tavern--I forget the name of the
+place--but Dr Hayward happened to have arrived there just a few minutes
+before them.  His horse was standing at the door, and he was inside,
+talking with the landlord, when he heard a loud shriek outside.  Running
+out, he found the girl struggling wildly in the hands of her captors.
+Of course, he demanded an explanation, though he saw clearly enough how
+matters stood.
+
+"`She's my slave,' said the owner, haughtily.  He would not, perhaps,
+have condescended even with that much explanation if he had not seen
+that the landlord sympathised with the doctor.
+
+"This was enough, however, for Hayward, who is a man of few words and
+swift action.  He was unarmed, but carried a heavy-handled whip, with
+this he instantly felled the slave-owner and one of his men to the
+ground before they had time to wink, but the third man drew a pistol,
+and, pointing it straight at the doctor's head, would have blown out his
+brains if the landlord had not turned the weapon aside and tripped the
+man up.  Before he could recover Hayward had swung the girl on his
+horse, leaped into the saddle, and dashed off at full speed.  He did not
+draw rein till he carried her over the frontier into Canada, and had
+placed her beyond the reach of her enemies."
+
+"Brayvo! the doctor," exclaimed Slag, heartily.
+
+"Then he found," continued Tomlin, "that he had been wounded in the
+chest by the ball that was meant for his head, but made light of the
+wound until it was found to be serious.  The ball was still in him, and
+had to be extracted, after which he recovered slowly.  The romantic part
+of it is, however, that he fell in love with Eva--that was the girl's
+name--and she with him, and they were married--"
+
+"Ah, poor thing," said Mitford; "then she died, and he married again?"
+
+"Not at all," returned Tomlin, "she did not die, and he did not marry
+again."
+
+"How--what then about that splendid wife that he's got in the
+after-cabin _now_?" asked Mitford.
+
+"That's her.  That's Eva, the quadroon.  She's not only as white as Mrs
+Massey or Mrs Mitford there, but she's been educated and brought up as
+a lady and among ladies, besides having the spirit of a _real_ lady,
+which many a born one hasn't got at all."
+
+There were many fore-cabin passengers who "crossed the line" that night
+in order to hear the gallant American lecture, but chiefly to see the
+beautiful lady who had been so romantically rescued from slavery.
+
+"Not a drop of black blood in her body!" was Mrs Mitford's verdict
+after the lecture was over.
+
+"An' what if there was?" demanded Slag, in a tone of indignation.  "D'ee
+think that white blood is worth more than black blood in the eyes o' the
+Almighty as made 'em both?"
+
+The lecture itself was highly appreciated, being on a subject which Bob
+and Joe had already made interesting to the steerage passengers.  And
+the lecturer not only treated it well, but was himself such a fine,
+lion-like, yet soft-voiced fellow that his audience were quite charmed.
+
+Soon the _Lapwing_ was gliding through the warm waters of the equatorial
+seas, and those of the passengers who had never visited such regions
+before, were immensely interested by the sight of dolphins, sharks, and
+especially flying-fish.
+
+"I _don't_ believe in 'em," said Mrs Mitford to Mrs Massey one day as
+they stood looking over the side of the ship.
+
+"I do believe in 'em," said Mrs Massey, "because my Bob says he has
+seen 'em."
+
+Not long after this double assertion of opinion there was a sudden cry
+that flying-fish were to be seen alongside, and Mrs Mitford actually
+beheld them with her own eyes leap out of the sea, skim over the waves a
+short distance, and then drop into the water again; still she was
+incredulous!  "Flyin'" she exclaimed, "nothin' of the sort; they only
+made a long jump out o' the water, an' wriggled their tails as they
+went; at least they wriggled something, for I couldn't be rightly sure
+they _'ad_ tails to wriggle, any more than wings--never 'avin' seen 'em
+except in pictures, which is mostly lies.  Indeed!"
+
+"Look-out!" exclaimed Slag at the moment, for a couple of fish flew over
+the bulwarks just then, and fell on deck almost at Mrs Mitford's feet.
+When she saw them there floundering about, wings and all, she felt
+constrained to give in.
+
+"Well, well," she said, raising her hands and eyes to heaven, as though
+she addressed her remarks chiefly to celestial ears, "did ever mortal
+see the likes?  Fish wi' wings an' no feathers!  I'll believe _anything_
+after that!"
+
+Peggy Mitford is not the first, and won't be the last woman--to say
+nothing of man--who has thus bounded from the depths of scepticism to
+the heights of credulity.
+
+
+
+STORY ONE, CHAPTER 5.
+
+Dr Hayward, who had given great satisfaction with his lecture,
+possessed so much urbanity and power of anecdote and song, that he soon
+became a general favourite alike with steerage and cabin passengers.
+
+One sultry forenoon Terrence O'Connor, the assistant steward, went aft
+and whispered to him that Ian Stuart, the sick boy, wanted very much to
+see him.
+
+"I think he's dying, sor," said Terrence, in a low tone.
+
+"Has the doctor seen him this morning?" asked Hayward, as he rose
+quickly and hurried forward.
+
+"He's seed him twice, sor," said Terrence, "an' both times he shook his
+head as he left him."
+
+It was evident that the steerage passengers felt death to be hovering
+over them, for they were unusually silent, and those who were in the
+fore-cabin at the time Hayward passed, cast solemn glances at him as he
+descended and went to the berth of the poor boy.  It was a comparatively
+large berth, and, being at the time on the weather side of the ship, had
+the port open to admit fresh air.
+
+"My poor boy, do you suffer much?" said the doctor, in soothing tones,
+as he sat down beside Ian, and took his hand.
+
+It was obvious that Ian suffered, for an expression of weariness and
+pain sat on his emaciated countenance, but on the appearance of Hayward
+the expression gave place to a glad smile on a face which was naturally
+refined and intellectual.
+
+"Oh, thank you--thanks--" said Ian, in a low hesitating voice, for he
+was almost too far gone to speak.
+
+"There, don't speak, dear boy," said the doctor, gently.  "I see you
+have been thinking about our last conversation.  Shall I read to you?"
+
+"No--no.  Jesus is speaking--to me.  His words are crowding on me.  No
+need for--reading when He speaks; `Come--unto Me--I will _never_--
+leave--'"
+
+His breath suddenly failed him, and he ceased to speak, but the glad
+look in his large eyes showed that the flow of Divine words, though
+inaudible, had not ceased.
+
+"Mother--father," he said, after a short pause, "don't cry.  You'll soon
+join me.  Don't let them cry, Dr Hayward.  The parting won't be for
+long."
+
+The Doctor made no reply, for at that moment the unmistakable signs of
+dissolution began to overspread the pinched features, and in a few
+minutes it became known throughout the ship that the "King of Terrors"
+had been there in the guise of an Angel of Light to pluck a little
+flower and transplant it into the garden of God.
+
+Hayward tried to impress this fact on the bereaved parents, but they
+would not be comforted.
+
+They were a lowly couple, who could not see far in advance of them, even
+in regard to things terrestrial.  The last words of their child seemed
+to have more weight than the comfort offered by the doctor.
+
+"Cheer up, David," said the poor wife, grasping her husband's hand, and
+striving to check her sobs, "Ian said truth, it won't be long afore we
+jine him, the dear, dear boy."
+
+But even as she uttered the words of cheer her own heart failed her, and
+she again gave way to uncontrollable grief, while her husband, dazed and
+motionless, sat gazing at the face of the dead.
+
+The funeral and its surroundings was as sad as the death.  Everything
+was done to shroud the terrible reality.  The poor remains were tenderly
+laid in a black deal coffin and carried to the port side of the ship by
+kind and loving hands.  A young Wesleyan minister, who had been an
+unfailing comforter and help to the family all through the boy's
+illness, gave a brief but very impressive address to those who stood
+around, and offered up an earnest prayer; but nothing could blind the
+mourners, especially the parents, to the harsh fact that the remains
+were about to be consigned to a never resting grave, and that they were
+going through the form rather than the reality of burial, while, as if
+to emphasise this fact, the back fin of a great shark was seen to cut
+the calm water not far astern.  It followed the ship until the hollow
+plunge was heard, and the weighted coffin sank into the unknown depths
+of the sea.
+
+An impression that never faded quite away was made that day on some of
+the more thoughtful and sensitive natures in the ship.  And who can say
+that even amongst the thoughtless and the depraved no effect was
+produced!  God's power is not usually exerted in visibly effective
+processes.  Seeds of life may have been sown by that death, which shall
+grow and flourish in eternity.  Certain it is that some of the reckless
+were solemnised for a time, and that the young Wesleyan was held in
+higher esteem throughout the ship from that day forward.
+
+Some of the passengers, however, seemed very soon to forget all about
+the death, and relapsed into their usual frames of mind.  Among these
+was Ned Jarring.  For several days after the funeral he kept sober, and
+it was observed that the Wesleyan minister tried to get into
+conversation with him several times, but he resisted the good man's
+efforts, and, when one of his chums laughingly remarked that he, "seemed
+to be hand and glove wi' the parson now," Black Ned swung angrily round,
+took to drinking again, and, as is usually the case in such
+circumstances, became worse than before.
+
+Thus the little world of ship-board went on from day to day, gradually
+settling down into little coteries as like-minded men and women began to
+find each other out.  Gradually, also, the various qualities of the
+people began to be recognised, and in a few weeks--as in the greater
+world--each man and woman was more or less correctly gauged according to
+worth.  The courageous and the timid, the sensible and the vain, the
+weak and the strong, the self-sacrificing and the selfish, all fell
+naturally into their appropriate positions, subject to the moderate
+confusion resulting from favouritism, abused power, and other forms of
+sin.  It was observable also that here, as elsewhere, all the coteries
+commented with considerable freedom on each other, and that each coterie
+esteemed itself unquestionably the best of the lot, although it might
+not absolutely say so in words.  There was one exception, namely in the
+case of the worst or lowest coterie, which, so far from claiming to be
+the best, openly proclaimed itself the worst, gloried in its shame, and
+said that, "it didn't care a button," or words, even more expressive, to
+the same effect.
+
+Ned Jarring belonged to this last class.  He was probably the worst
+member of it.
+
+One night an incident occurred which tested severely some of the
+qualities of every one on board.  It was sometime after midnight when
+the dead silence of the slumbering ship was broken by perhaps the most
+appalling of all sounds at sea--the cry of "Fire!"
+
+Smoke had been discovered somewhere near the fore-cabin.  Fortunately
+the captain had just come up at the time to speak with the officer of
+the watch on deck.  At the first cry he ran to the spot pointed out,
+telling the officer to call all hands and rig the pumps, and especially
+to keep order among the passengers.
+
+The first man who leaped from profound slumber into wide-awake activity
+was Dr Hayward.  Having just lain down to sleep on a locker, as he
+expected to be called in the night to watch beside a friend who was ill,
+he was already dressed, and would have been among the first at the scene
+of the fire, but for an interruption.  At the moment he was bounding up
+the companion-ladder, a young man of feeble character--who would have
+been repudiated by the sex, had he been born a woman--sprang down the
+same ladder in abject terror.  He went straight into the bosom of the
+ascending doctor, and they both went with a crash to the bottom.
+
+Although somewhat stunned, Hayward was able to jump up and again make
+for the region of the fire, where he found most of the men and male
+passengers working with hose and buckets in the midst of dire confusion.
+Fortunately the seat of the conflagration was soon discovered; and,
+owing much to the cool energy of the captain and officers, the fire was
+put out.
+
+It was about a week after this thrilling event that Mrs Massey was on
+the forecastle talking with Peggy Mitford.  A smart breeze was blowing--
+just enough to fill all the sails and carry the ship swiftly on her
+course, without causing much of a sea.  The moon shone fitfully through
+a mass of drifting clouds, mingling its pallid light with the wondrous
+phosphoric sheen of the tropical seas.
+
+Mrs Mitford had been regaling her companion with a long-winded and
+irrelevant, though well-meant, yarn about things in general and nothing
+in particular; and Nellie, who was the personification of considerate
+patience, had seated herself on the starboard rail to listen to and
+comment on her lucubrations.
+
+"Yes, as I was sayin', Nellie," remarked Peggy, in her soft voice, after
+a brief pause, during which a variety of weak little expressions crossed
+her pretty face, "I never could abide the sea.  It always makes me sick,
+an' when it doesn't make me sick, it makes me nervish.  Not that I'm
+given to bein' nervish; an', if I was, it wouldn't matter much, for the
+sea would take it out o' me, whether or not.  That's always the way--if
+it's not one thing, it's sure to be another.  Don't you think so,
+Nellie?  My John says 'e thinks so--though it isn't to be thought much
+of what _'e_ says, dear man, for 'e's got a way of sayin' things when 'e
+don't mean 'em--you understand?"
+
+"Well, I don't quite understand," answered Mrs Massey, cutting in at
+this point with a laugh, "but I'm quite sure it's better to say things
+when you don't mean them, than to mean things when you don't say them!"
+
+"Perhaps you're right, Nellie," rejoined Mrs Mitford, with a mild nod
+of assent; "I've sometimes thought on these things when I've 'ad one o'
+my sick 'eadaches, which prevents me from thinkin' altogether, almost;
+an', bless you, you'd wonder what strange idears comes over me at such
+times.  Did you ever try to think things with a sick 'eadache, Nellie?"
+
+With a laugh, and a bright look, Mrs Massey replied that she had never
+been in a position to try that curious experiment, never having had a
+headache of any kind in her life.
+
+While she was speaking, a broad-backed wave caused the ship to roll
+rather heavily to starboard, and Mrs Massey, losing her balance, fell
+into the sea.
+
+Sedate and strong-minded though she was, Nellie could not help shrieking
+as she went over; but the shriek given by Mrs Mitford was tenfold more
+piercing.  It was of a nature that defies description.  Its effect was
+to thrill the heart of every one who heard it.  But Peggy did more than
+shriek.  Springing on the rail like an antelope, she would have plunged
+overboard to the rescue of her friend, regardless of her own inability
+to swim, and of everything else, had not a seaman, who chanced to be
+listening to the conversation--caught her with a vice-like grip.
+
+"Hold on, Peggy!" he cried.
+
+But Peggy shrieked and struggled, thus preventing the poor fellow from
+attempting a rescue, while shouts and cries of "man overboard" rang
+through the ship from stem to stern, until it became known that it was a
+woman.  Then the cries redoubled.  In the midst of the hubbub the strong
+but calm voice of the captain was heard to give orders to lower a boat
+and port the helm--"hard a-port."
+
+But, alas! for poor Nellie that night if her life had depended on
+shouters, strugglers, shriekers, or boatmen.
+
+At the moment the accident happened two men chanced to be standing on
+the starboard side of the ship--one on the quarter-deck, the other on
+the forecastle.  Both men were ready of resource and prompt in action,
+invaluable qualities anywhere, but especially at sea!  The instant the
+cry arose each sprang to and cut adrift a life-buoy.  Each knew that the
+person overboard might fail to see or catch a buoy in the comparative
+darkness.  He on the forecastle, who chanced to see Nellie fall over, at
+once followed her with the life-buoy in his arms.  Ignorant of this act
+the man near the stern saw something struggling in the water as the ship
+flew past.  Without an instant's hesitation he also plunged into the sea
+with a life-buoy in his grasp.
+
+The faint light failed to reveal who had thus boldly plunged to the
+rescue, but the act had been observed both at bow and stern, and a cheer
+of hope went up as the ship came up to the wind, topsails were backed,
+and the boat was dropped into the water.
+
+Twenty minutes elapsed before there was any sign of the boat returning,
+during which time the ship's bell was rung continually.  It may be
+better imagined than described the state of poor Bob Massey, who had
+been asleep on a locker in the fore-cabin when the accident occurred,
+and who had to be forcibly prevented, at first, from jumping into the
+sea when he heard that it was Nellie who was overboard.
+
+At last oars were heard in the distance.
+
+"Stop that bell! boat ahoy!" shouted the captain.
+
+"Ship aho-o-oy!" came faintly back on the breeze, while every voice was
+hushed and ear strained to listen, "All right! all saved!"
+
+A loud "Thank the Lord!" burst from our coxswain's heaving chest, and a
+wild ringing cheer leaped upwards alike from passengers and crew, while
+warm tears overflowed from many an eye that was more intimate with cold
+spray, for a noble deed and a life saved have always the effect of
+stirring the deepest enthusiasm of mankind.
+
+A few minutes more and three dripping figures came up the gangway.
+First came Nellie herself; dishevelled and pale, but strong and hearty
+nevertheless, as might be expected of a fisher-girl and a lifeboat
+coxswain's wife!  She naturally fell into, or was caught up by, her
+husband's arms, and was carried off to the cabin.
+
+Following her came two somewhat exhausted men.
+
+The cheer that greeted them was not unmingled with surprise.
+
+"The best an' the worst men i' the ship!" gasped Joe Slag, amid laughter
+and hearty congratulations.
+
+He was probably right, for it was the young Wesleyan minister and Ned
+Jarring who had effected this gallant rescue.
+
+The performance of a good action has undoubtedly a tendency to elevate,
+as the perpetration of a bad one has to demoralise.
+
+From that day forward Black Ned felt that he had acquired a certain
+character which might be retained or lost.  Without absolutely saying
+that he became a better man in consequence, we do assert that he became
+more respectable to look at, and drank less!
+
+Thus the voyage progressed until the good ship _Lapwing_ sailed in among
+some of the innumerable islands of the Southern seas.
+
+
+
+STORY ONE, CHAPTER 6.
+
+Darkness, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, is probably the
+greatest evil that man has had to contend with since the fall.  At all
+events, the physical and mental forms of it were the cause of the good
+ship _Lapwing_ sailing one night straight to destruction.
+
+It happened thus.  A pretty stiff breeze, amounting almost to half a
+gale, was blowing on the night in question, and the emigrant ship was
+running before it under close-reefed topsails.  For some days previously
+the weather had been "dirty," and the captain had found it impossible to
+obtain an observation, so that he was in the dark as to the exact part
+of the ocean, in which he was sailing.
+
+In an open sea this is not of serious moment, but when one is nearing
+land, or in the neighbourhood of islands, it becomes cause for much
+anxiety.  To make matters worse, the ship had been blown considerably
+out of her course, and, worst of all, the night was so intensely dark
+that it was not possible to see more than a few yards beyond the flying
+jibboom.
+
+The captain and mate, with several of the men, stood on the forecastle
+peering anxiously out into the darkness.
+
+"I don't like the look o' things at all," muttered the captain to the
+chief mate.
+
+"Perhaps it would be well, sir, to lay-to till daylight," suggested the
+mate.
+
+Whether the captain agreed with his chief officer or not was never
+known, for just then a dull sound was heard which sent a thrill to the
+bravest heart on board.
+
+"Breakers ahead!" cried the look-out, as in duty bound, but he was
+instantly contradicted by the mate, who shouted that they were on the
+starboard beam, while another voice roared that they were on the
+port-bow.
+
+The helm was instantly put hard a-port, and immediately after the order
+was given "hard a-starboard," for it was discovered that the sound of
+breakers came from both sides of the vessel.  They were, obviously,
+either running in a narrow strait between two islands, or into a bay.
+In the first case the danger was imminent, in the second case,
+destruction was almost inevitable.
+
+"Clear the anchor, and stand by to let go!" cried the captain, in loud
+sharp tones, for he felt that there was no room to turn and retreat.
+The order was also given to take in all sail.
+
+But before either order could be obeyed, a cry of terror burst from many
+throats, for right in front of them there suddenly loomed out of the
+darkness an object like a great black cloud, which rose high above and
+seemed about to fall upon them.  There was no mistaking its nature,
+however, for by that time the roar of the breakers right ahead told but
+too plainly that they were rushing straight upon a high perpendicular
+cliff.  At this moment the vessel struck a rock.  It was only a slight
+touch at the stern, nevertheless it tore the rudder away, so that the
+intention of the captain to put about and take his chance of striking on
+the rocks to starboard was frustrated.
+
+"Let go," he shouted, in this extremity.
+
+Quick as lightning the anchor went to the bottom but with such way on
+the ship, the sudden strain snapped the chain, and the _Lapwing_ rushed
+upon her doom, while cries of terror and despair arose from the
+passengers, who had by that time crowded on deck.
+
+To the surprise of the captain, and those who were capable of
+intelligent observation, the ship did not immediately strike again, but
+sailed straight on as if right against the towering cliffs.  Still
+onward it went, and as it did so there settled around them a darkness so
+profound that no one could see even an inch before his eyes.  Then at
+last the ill-fated vessel struck, but not with her hull, as might have
+been expected.  High up above them a terrific crash was heard.
+
+"God help us," exclaimed the captain, "we've sailed straight into a
+cave!"
+
+That he was right soon became evident, for immediately after the
+crashing of the topmasts against the roof of the cave, a shower of small
+stones and several large fragments fell on the deck with a rattle like
+that of musketry.  Some of the people were struck and injured, though
+not seriously so, by the shower.
+
+"Get down below, all of you!" cried the captain, himself taking shelter
+under the companion hatchway.  But the order was needless, for the
+danger was so obvious that every one sought the shelter of the cabins
+without delay.
+
+The situation was not only terrible but exceedingly singular, as well as
+trying, for as long as stones came thundering down on the deck it would
+have been sheer madness to have attempted to do anything aboveboard, and
+to sit idle in the cabins with almost certain death staring them in the
+face, was a severe test of endurance.
+
+From the motion of the vessel several facts could be deduced.  Although
+the scraping and crashing of the masts overhead told eloquently of
+destruction going on in that direction, the heaving of the ship, and her
+striking occasionally on either side, proved that there was deep water
+below her.  That they were not progressing into an interminable cavern
+was made evident by the frequent plunging of the shattered bowsprit
+against the inner end of the cave.  This action sent the vessel reeling
+backwards, as it were, every time she struck, besides shattering the
+bowsprit.  That the cave, also, was open to the full force of the sea
+was only too severely proved by the rush of the billows into it, and the
+frequent and severe shocks to which they were in consequence subjected.
+These shocks had extinguished the lamps, and it was only by the aid of a
+few candles that they were delivered from sitting in absolute darkness.
+
+In these awful circumstances the young Wesleyan proved that, besides the
+courage that he had already shown in facing danger on a sudden
+emergency, he also possessed that far higher courage which can face the
+slow and apparently sure approach of death with equanimity and
+self-possession.  Moreover, he proved that the Word of God and prayer
+are the true resources of man in such extremities.
+
+Calling those who were willing, around him, he led them in prayer, and
+then quieted the timid among them, as well as comforted all, not by
+reading, but by quoting appropriate passages from Scripture, in which he
+was profoundly versed.
+
+"D'ee know when it'll be low water, sir?" asked Joe Slag of the captain,
+when the ship gave one of her upward heaves and rasped her timbers again
+on the sides of the cave.
+
+"Not for three hours yet, but it's falling.  I expect there will be less
+sea on in a short time.  If the ship holds together we may yet be
+saved."
+
+There was a murmured "thank God" at these words.  Then Bob Massey
+expressed some fear that there might be a danger of striking the rocks
+underneath before low water.
+
+"I wish it was the risin' tide," he said, and the words took his mind
+back, like a flash of lightning, to the time when he used them in a very
+different sense.  Then all was peace, hope, sunshine, and his bride was
+sitting like a good angel beside him, with a sweet smile on her fair
+face.  Now, something like darkness visible, showed him his poor wife--
+still beside him, thank God--but clinging to his arm with looks of
+terror amounting almost to despair.  "What a contrast!" he thought, and
+for the first time a feeling of rebellion arose in his mind.
+
+"There's no use o' sittin' here to be drowned like rats," he cried,
+starting up.  "I'll go on deck an' take a cast o' the lead, an' see what
+chances we have."
+
+"No, you won't, Bob," cried Nellie, throwing her arms firmly round him.
+"There's big stones falling all about the deck yet.  Don't you hear
+them?"
+
+As if to corroborate her words, a piece of rock nearly half a ton in
+weight fell on the sky-light at that moment, crashed completely through
+it, through the table below, and even sank into the cabin floor.
+Fortunately, no one was hurt, though Slag had a narrow escape, but that
+worthy was not easily intimidated.  He rose up, and, saying that, "it
+was as well to be killed on deck doin' somethin' as in the cabin doin'
+nothin'," was about to ascend the ladder when Dr Hayward suddenly
+entered, all wet and dishevelled, and with blood trickling down his
+face.
+
+"No use going up just now, Joe," he said, as he sat down beside his
+wife, and permitted her to tie a kerchief round his head.  "Only a
+slight wound, Eva, got while taking soundings.  I find that there are
+sixteen fathoms of water under us, and, although I couldn't see my hand
+held up before my face, I managed to make out by the flash of a match,
+which burned for a moment before being blown out, that the sides of the
+cave are quite perpendicular, not the smallest ledge to stand on.  The
+tide, however, is ebbing fast, and the water in the cave calming, so
+that if no bad leak has been made by all this thumping we may yet be
+saved.  Our only chance is to stick to the ship."
+
+While he was speaking the vessel again surged violently against one side
+of the cave, and another of the huge masses of rock that were brought
+down by the swaying masts came crashing on the deck.
+
+"There is no bad leak as yet," said the captain, re-entering the cabin,
+which he had quitted for the purpose of sounding the well.  "If we can
+keep afloat for an hour or two we may be able to use the boats.  Just
+now it would be useless to attempt launching them."
+
+Although the captain's words were not particularly reassuring, his
+confident tone and manner infused hope, and comforted the people
+greatly.  Some of the male passengers even volunteered to face the
+shower of stones, if need be, and lend a hand in launching the boats,
+when the time for doing so arrived.
+
+These boats, three in number, were lying bottom up on deck, and to reach
+them involved the risk of death to whoever should attempt it.  They were
+therefore compelled to wait.
+
+It is difficult to form even a slight conception of the horrors of that
+night.  For several hours they sat in the after-cabin, and the ship
+surged and plunged in the wildly-heaving water, striking the sides
+continually, while rocks fell at intervals on the deck, thus adding to
+the noise of wind and waves as they raged with echoing, deafening noise
+in the black cavern.  Each moment it seemed as if the ship must have her
+planks stove in and be sunk, but she was a new vessel and strong.  Of
+course she leaked considerably, but when the tide went down the sea
+calmed a little, the rocks ceased falling from the roof, and they were
+enabled to rig the pumps and work them vigorously.  The boats,
+meanwhile, were cast loose and got ready to launch at the first glimmer
+of daylight!  Fortunately, they had received no serious injury from the
+falling rocks.
+
+Oh, how they longed and prayed for the day!  It came at last, a gleam so
+faint that it showed nothing of their surroundings save the outline of
+the cavern's great mouth.
+
+"Shall we launch the boats now, sir?" asked the first mate, who was
+becoming anxious, because the carpenter had just reported that the water
+in the hold was increasing dangerously in spite of the pumps.
+
+"Not yet--not yet," returned the captain, hurriedly.  "We must have more
+light first.  The loss of a boat would be fatal.  I'm afraid of the
+rising tide."
+
+"Afraid of the rising tide!"  Again the words struck strangely on Bob
+Massey's ears as he stood wiping the perspiration from his brow after a
+long spell at the pumps--and once more carried him back to the sunlit
+sands of Old England.
+
+Soon the increase of water in the hold was so great that the getting out
+of the boats could no longer be delayed.  The first launched was a small
+one.  It was lowered over the stern by means of the studding-sail boom,
+with a block and whip, which kept it from dropping too quickly into the
+water.  Massey and his friend Slag, being recognised as expert boatmen
+in trying circumstances, were sent in it, with two of the crew, to run
+out a line and drop an anchor in the sea outside, so that the heavier
+boats might be hauled out thereby.  Two hundred and fifty fathoms of
+rope were given them--more than sufficient for the purpose.  On getting
+outside, Bob and his friend, according to custom as lifeboat men, kept a
+sharp look-out on everything around them, and the feeble daylight
+enabled them to see that the black cliff which had, as it were,
+swallowed up the _Lapwing_, was full six hundred feet high and a sheer
+precipice, in some places overhanging at the top, and without the
+symptom of a break as far as the eye could reach in either direction.
+
+"A black look-out, Joe," muttered Massey, as he assisted his comrade to
+heave the anchor over the side.
+
+"Ay, Bob, an' the worst of it is that the tide's risin'.  A boat can
+live here as long as that ridge o' rocks keeps off the seas, but in an
+hour or so it'll be rollin' in as bad as ever."
+
+"I knows it, Joe, an' the more need to look sharp."
+
+Returning to the ship, our coxswain made his report, and recommended
+urgent haste.  But the captain required no urging, for by that time the
+ship's main deck was level with the water, and the seas were making a
+clean breach over the stern.  The passengers and crew crowded towards
+the port gangway where the large boat was being brought round to receive
+the women and children first.  This was such a familiar scene to the two
+lifeboat men that they kept cool and self-possessed from the mere force
+of habit.  Seeing this, the captain ordered Mitford to get into the boat
+first, and help to stow the others, for it would be a tight pack, he
+said, to stow them all.  Dr Hayward was ordered to assist.  Ned Jarring
+volunteered to help to fend the boat off during the operation, and,
+without waiting for permission, jumped into her.
+
+Mitford had consigned his wife to the care of his friend Massey, who at
+once undertook the duty by tying a kerchief round Peggy's head to keep
+her hair out of her eyes, after which he did the same for Nellie.  Both
+women were perfectly quiet and submissive--the first owing to fear and
+exhaustion, the last from native courage, which enabled her to rise to
+the occasion.  Massey then stripped off all his own clothes, except
+shirt and trousers, so as to be ready for swimming, and, catching up a
+rope, advanced towards his wife, intending to fasten it round her waist.
+
+"Peggy first, Bob; I'll wait for _you_," said his wife.
+
+"Look sharp!" cried the captain.
+
+Bob turned at once to Peggy, and in a few seconds she was lowered into
+the boat.  Mrs Hayward followed.  Then Massey insisted on his wife
+going, and the obedient Nellie submitted, but, owing to a lurch of the
+ship at the moment, she missed the boat, and dropped into the water.
+One of the men attempted to pull her in, but could not, and, as all the
+others were engaged at the moment in trying to fend off the rocks,
+Massey at once jumped into the sea, and helped to get his wife into the
+boat.
+
+At that moment there arose a cry that the ship was sinking, and a wild
+rush was made for the long-boat, which had also been successfully
+launched.  Of course it was instantly overcrowded, for all discipline
+was now at an end.  Before anything else could be done the _Lapwing_
+sank in sixteen fathoms of water, carrying the long-boat and all the
+people in her along with it, but those in the other boat had shoved off
+at the first wild cry, and hauling on the anchored cable, just escaped
+being sucked down by the sinking ship.
+
+Bob Massey clung to the boat's gunwale, and thus escaped.  Rowing back
+instantly, however, to the spot where the ship had gone down, they
+sought eagerly for swimmers.  Only three were discovered and rescued,
+but the others--seventy souls in all--found a watery grave in the dark
+cavern of that unknown land.
+
+
+
+STORY ONE, CHAPTER 7.
+
+So rapidly did the final catastrophe take place that it was difficult
+for the rescued party at first to credit the evidence of their senses.
+On the spot where the _Lapwing_ had been beating her sides against the
+cruel walls of the cavern, and where so many hearts had been throbbing
+wildly between hope and fear, no living creature remained; nothing but a
+few feet of the shattered masts appearing now and then above the surging
+waves, was left to tell of the terrible tragedy that had been enacted
+there.
+
+For upwards of an hour the party in the boat hovered about the place,
+not so much with the hope of rescuing any of their shipmates as on
+account of the difficulty of tearing themselves away from the fatal
+spot.  Perhaps the natural tendency of man to hope against hope had
+something to do with it.  Then they passed silently out of the cavern
+and rowed slowly along the base of the tremendous cliffs.
+
+At length the feeling of self-preservation began to assert itself, and
+Bob Massey was the first to break silence with the question--
+
+"Does any one know if there's anything to eat aboard?"
+
+"We'd better see to that," observed Dr Hayward, who was steering.
+
+Bob Massey pulled in his oar, and, without remark, began to search the
+boat.  It was found that all the food they had brought away consisted of
+nine tins of preserved meat and three pieces of pork, a supply which
+would not go far among ten persons.
+
+The ten survivors were Dr Hayward and his wife; Massey and Nellie; Joe
+Slag; John Mitford and his wife Peggy; Terrence O'Connor, the assistant
+cook; Tomlin, one of the cabin passengers; and Ned Jarring.  All the
+rest, as we have said, had perished with the ill-fated _Lapwing_.
+
+Little was said at first, for the hopelessness of their condition seemed
+so obvious that the men shrank from expressing their gloomy fears to the
+women who sat huddled together, wet and cold, in the bottom of the boat.
+
+As we have said, as far as the eye could see in any direction, the
+frowning cliffs rose perpendicularly out of deep water.  There was not
+even a strip of sand or a bay into which they could run in case of the
+wind increasing.
+
+"There is nothing for it but to push on till we come to an inlet, or
+break of some sort in the cliffs, by which we may land," said Hayward,
+speaking encouragingly to the women.  "God helping us, we are sure to
+find some such place ere long."
+
+"Don't look very like it," muttered Black Ned, gloomily.
+
+"We can see how it looks about as well as you can," retorted John
+Mitford, indignantly.  "If ye can't say somethin' to cheer the women,
+there's no need for to look blue an' tell us what a mere babby could see
+for itself."
+
+This remark, coming as it did from lugubrious Mitford, caused Terrence
+O'Connor to smile.
+
+"True for ye," he said, "we can see what's fornint us, but even Black
+Ned can't see round the corner."
+
+"Besides, there may be a flat shore on the other side o' the island,"
+added Bob Massey in a cheerful tone; "I've often noticed islands o' this
+build, and when they're so high on one side they usually are low on the
+opposite side; so we'll only have to pull round--an' mayhap there are
+people on it--who knows?"
+
+"Ay, natives pr'aps," growled Jarring, "an' cannibals who are fond of
+eatin' white folk--specially women!"
+
+"Shut up your black muzzle, or I'll heave ye overboard!" said Mitford,
+fiercely, for like many easy-going, quiet men, he was unusually savage
+when fairly roused.
+
+Whatever Black Ned may have felt, he gave no expression to his thoughts
+or feelings by word or look, but continued calmly to pull his oar.
+
+All that day, and all that night, however, the party pulled steadily
+along the shore without finding an opening in the cliffs or any part
+which could be scaled by man.  During this period their plight was
+miserable in the extreme, for the weather at the time was bitterly cold;
+they were drenched through and through with spray, which broke so
+frequently over the side as to necessitate constant baling, and, to make
+matters worse, towards evening of the second day snow began to fall and
+continued to do so the greater part of the night.  Fortunately, before
+dark they came to some small rocky islets, on which they could not land
+as the waves washed over them, but in the lee of which they cast anchor,
+and thus were enabled to ride out a furious gale, which sprang up at
+sunset and did not subside till morning.
+
+It need scarcely be said that the men did all that lay in their power to
+shelter the poor women, who had exhibited great fortitude and
+uncomplaining endurance all that weary time; but little could be done
+for them, for there was not even a bit of sail to put over them as a
+protection.
+
+"Nellie, dear," said Massey, when the boat was brought up under the lee
+of the rocks, "d'ee feel _very_ cold?"
+
+"Not very," replied his wife, raising her head.  "I'm strong, thank God,
+and can stand it; but Peggy here is shudderin' awful bad.  I believe
+she'll die if somethin' isn't done for her."
+
+"I think if she could only ring the water out of her clothes," whispered
+Mrs Hayward to her husband, "it might do her some good, but--"
+
+"I know that, Eva: it would do you all good, and we must have it done
+somehow--"
+
+An exclamation in the bow of the boat at that moment attracted
+attention.  It was John Mitford, who, having taken off his own coat, and
+wrapped it round his shivering wife, had gone to the bow to rummage in a
+locker there, and had found a tarpaulin.  Massey had overhauled the
+locker for food before him, but the tarpaulin had been so well folded,
+and laid so flat in the bottom, that it had escaped his notice.
+
+Retiring aft with this god-send, the lugubrious man speedily, with the
+assistance of his comrades, covered over the centre of the boat so
+completely that a small chamber was formed, into which the women could
+retire.  It was not high enough, indeed, to stand in, but it formed a
+sufficient shelter from wind and spray.
+
+"Now, Peggy, my dear," said her husband when it was finished, "get in
+there--off wi' your things an' wring 'em out."
+
+"Th-thank you, J-John," replied Peggy, whose teeth chattered like
+castanets, "but 'ow am I t-to d-dry 'em?  For wet c-clo'es won't dry
+wi-without a fire.  At least I n-never 'eard of--"
+
+The remainder of her remarks were lost to male ears as the tarpaulin
+dropped around her after Eva Hayward and Nellie had led, or half-lifted,
+her under its sheltering folds.  How they managed to manipulate the
+shivering Peggy it is not our province to tell, but there can be no
+doubt that the treatment of her two friends in misfortune was the cause
+of her emerging from under the tarpaulin the following morning alive and
+comparatively well, though still far from dry.
+
+The aspect of things had changed greatly for the better when the
+unfortunates resumed their voyage.  The wind had abated, the sea,
+although still heaving, was smooth.  The snow had ceased, and the sun
+arose in a cloudless sky, so that when poor Mrs Mitford raised her
+dishevelled head and felt the sun's cheering rays she exclaimed, with a
+sigh of relief: "La! if the sun ain't blazin' 'ot!  An' I'm so 'ungry.
+Dear, dear, 'ave you bin rowin' all night, John?  'Ow tired you must be;
+an' your 'ands blistered, though you are pretty tough in the 'ands, but
+you couldn't 'old a candle to Bob Massey at that--Yes, yes, Nellie, I
+'ear you, but la! what does it matter 'ow your 'air an' things is
+deranged w'en you're wrecked at sea and--"
+
+The abrupt disappearance of the dishevelled head at that moment
+suggested the idea that Mrs Mitford had either fallen backward suddenly
+or been pulled under cover by her companions.
+
+"She's all right, anyhow," said O'Connor, adjusting his oar.
+
+"She's always all right," remarked Mitford in a funereal tone, which,
+however, was meant to be confidential.  "Bless your heart, I've seen
+that woman under all circumstances, but although she's timid by nature,
+an' not over strong in body, I've never seen her give in or fairly cast
+down.  No doubt she was pretty low last night, poor thing, but that was
+'cause she was nigh dead wi' cold--yet her spirit wasn't crushed.  It's
+my solemn conviction that if my Peggy ever dies at all she'll die game."
+
+With a profound sigh of satisfaction at having thus borne testimony to
+the rare and admirable qualities of his wife, the worthy man applied
+himself to his oar with redoubled vigour.
+
+It is quite a pleasure in this censorious world to see any man
+absolutely blind to his wife's faults, and thoroughly awake to her good
+qualities.  The opinion formed of Peggy--by Mrs Massey and Mrs Hayward
+respectively, did not quite coincide with that of John Mitford.
+
+"How did you get on with poor Peggy last night, Eva?" asked Dr Hayward
+of his wife, in an undertone, as they breakfasted that forenoon beside
+the tiller, while the rest of their companions were similarly engaged in
+the middle of the boat, and at the bow.
+
+"Pretty well, Tom, but she's troublesome to manage.  She is so unusually
+timid, poor creature, so prone to give way to despair when things look
+bad, yet so sweetly apt to bound into high spirits when things are
+looking hopeful,--and withal, so amusingly garrulous!"
+
+Strange to say, at the very moment that this was uttered, Nellie was
+remarking to her husband in a low tone that, "poor Peggy was quite a
+puzzle, that she was all but dead at one moment, and quite lively at
+another, that she professed to be all submission, but was as obstinate
+as a pig, and that her tongue--soft though it was--went like the clapper
+of a mill!"
+
+We have referred to breakfast, but the meal spread before the castaways
+hardly merits that name, for it consisted of only a small slice of pork
+to each; a few pieces of ship's biscuit that Slag had discovered in his
+pockets; and a cup of water drawn from the pond which had accumulated in
+a hollow of the tarpaulin during the night.
+
+"It is lucky that one of the pieces of pork happened to be cooked,"
+observed Dr Hayward, as he served out the allowance, "for I would have
+been sorry to break into the preserved meat tins till forced to do so.
+We must keep these as a reserve as long as possible."
+
+"Right you are, sir!" said Slag, with his mouth full, while with a
+clasp-knife he carefully cut off another morsel to be ready, "right you
+are!  That 'minds me when we was starvin', me and my shipmates in the
+Arctic regions, so as our ribs was all but comin' through our skins, an'
+we was beginnin' to cast an evil eye on the stooard who'd kep' fatter
+than the rest of us somehow, an' was therefore likely to prove a more
+satisfyin' kind o' grub, d'ee see--"
+
+"I say, Joe," said Hayward, interrupting, for he feared that Slag's
+anecdote might not tend to render the pork breakfast more palatable.
+
+"Sir?" said Slag.
+
+"Will you just go to the bow and take a squint ahead?  I think there
+seems to be something like an end o' the cliffs in view--your eyes are
+better than mine."
+
+Slag swallowed the mouthful on which he was engaged, thrust after it the
+morsel that was ready to follow, wiped the clasp-knife on his thigh, and
+went forward to "take a squint."
+
+It turned out that the "end" of the cliffs which the doctor had only
+supposed possible, was a reality, for, after a long gaze, Slag turned
+and said--
+
+"Your eyes are better than you think, sir, for the end o' the cliff is
+visible, an' a spit o' sand beyond is quite plain."
+
+As this report was corroborated by Bob Massey, and then by all the other
+men, it sent a thrill of gratitude into the hearts of most of the
+party--especially the women, who, having lain so long wet and almost
+motionless, were nearly benumbed in spite of the sunshine.  Longer
+exposure, indeed, would probably have proved fatal to poor Mrs Mitford,
+possibly also to Mrs Hayward, who was by no means robust.  As for our
+coxswain's wife, having been reared among the health-giving breezes of
+the sea-shore, and inured from infancy to exposure and hard work, she
+suffered much less than her female companions, and busied herself a
+great part of the time in chafing their cold limbs.  In doing this she
+reaped the natural advantage of being herself both warmed and
+invigorated.  Thus virtue not only "is," but inevitably brings, its own
+reward!  Similarly, vice produced its natural consequences in the case
+of Black Ned, for that selfish man, being lazy, shirked work a good
+deal.  It is possible to pull an oar in such a way that, though the
+rower may be apparently doing his best, he is, in reality, taking the
+work very lightly and doing next to nothing.  Acting in this way, Ned
+Jarring became cold when the sleet and spray were driving in his face,
+his blood flowed sluggishly in his veins, and his sufferings were,
+consequently, much more severe than those of his comrades.  Towards the
+afternoon of that day, they rounded the spit of sand mentioned by Joe
+Slag, and came upon a low-lying coast.  After proceeding a considerable
+distance along which, they discovered a good harbour.  This was
+fortunate, for grey clouds had again covered the sun and a bitter east
+wind began to blow.
+
+"Thank God, Eva," said Hayward, as he steered into the bay, "for if we
+had not come upon this harbour, your strength and that of poor Peggy, I
+fear, would have failed, but now you'll be all right in a short time."
+
+"Oh, no, sir, I don't think as _my_ strength would fail," said Peggy, in
+a feeble voice, for she had overheard the remark.  "Not that I shouldn't
+be thankful all the same, I allow--for thankfulness for mercies received
+is a dooty, an' most on us do fail in that, though I say it that
+shouldn't, but my strength ain't quite gone yet--"
+
+"Stand by, Slag, to fend off with your oar when we get close in," said
+the doctor, interrupting Peggy's discourse.
+
+"Have any of you got matches in your pockets?" asked Massey, clapping
+his hands suddenly to the various receptacles about his person, with a
+look of unwonted anxiety.
+
+"Ye may well ax that, Bob," said O'Connor, using his own hands in the
+same way.  "Cold, wet weather, and no house!  It 'ud be death to the
+women, sure, av--"
+
+"Here you are!" shouted Tomlin in a burst of triumph, in spite of his
+naturally reserved disposition.
+
+He held up a box of vestas which, being a smoker, he fortunately had in
+his pocket.
+
+"I hope they ain't wet," remarked Black Ned, suggestively.
+
+"Wrap 'em well up," said Slag.
+
+Tomlin drew out his handkerchief and proceeded to do so.  At the same
+moment the boat's keel grated softly on the shingly shore.
+
+
+
+STORY ONE, CHAPTER 8.
+
+Seldom have the mysterious sparks of life been sought for more
+anxiously, or tended and nursed with greater care, than were the little
+sparks of fire which were evoked with difficulty from Tomlin's
+match-box.
+
+Drizzling rain had commenced just as the wrecked party landed.  The
+tarpaulin had been set up as a slight, though very imperfect, shelter;
+the ground underneath had been strewn with twigs and grass, and a large
+pile of dead branches had been arranged to receive the vital spark
+before any attempt was made to create it.
+
+"Everything must be quite ready, first," said Hayward to Tomlin, "for
+our very lives depend, under God, on our securing fire; so keep the
+matches snug in your pocket till I ask for them."
+
+"I will," replied Tomlin, "D'you know it never occurred to me before how
+tremendously important the element of fire is?  But how will you ever
+manage to make the branches catch, everything being so thoroughly
+soaked?"
+
+"You shall see.  I have had to make a fire in worse circumstances than
+the present," returned Hayward, "though I admit they are bad enough.
+Have you got the small twigs broken and ready, Slag?"
+
+"All ready, sir."
+
+"Now look here, Tomlin."
+
+As he spoke, the doctor picked up a dead but wet branch, and, sheltering
+himself under the tarpaulin, began to whittle it with his penknife.  He
+found, of course, that the interior of the branch was dry.  The thin
+morsels which he sliced off were handed to Slag, who placed them with
+great care in the heart of a bundle of very small twigs resembling a
+crow's nest.  A place had been reserved for this bundle or nest, in the
+heart of the large pile of branches lying on the ground.  Meanwhile,
+Slag held the nest ready in his hands.
+
+"Now, Tomlin, get out your matches," said the doctor.
+
+With the utmost care the anxious man unfolded the kerchief, and, opening
+the box, looked into it earnestly.
+
+"Wet?" asked Hayward.
+
+Tomlin shook his head.  "I fear they are."  He took one out, while the
+whole party assembled round him to note the result.
+
+The first match dropped its head like a piece of soft putty when scraped
+on the lid.  The second did the same, and a suppressed groan escaped
+from the little group, for it could be seen that there were not more
+than ten or twelve matches in the box altogether.  Again and again a
+match was struck with similar result.  The fifth, however, crackled a
+little, and rekindled, sinking hope in the observers, though it failed
+to kindle itself.  The seventh burst at once into a bright blaze and
+almost drew forth a cheer, which, however, was checked when a puff of
+wind blew out the new-born flame.
+
+"Och! let Bob Massey try it!" cried O'Connor.  "Sure he's used to
+workin' in throublesome weather."
+
+"Right, boy," said Slag, "hand it to the coxs'n."
+
+Tomlin readily obeyed, only too glad to get some of the failure shifted
+to other shoulders.
+
+Massey readily undertook the task, and success attended his first
+effort.
+
+"I knowed it!" said Nellie, in a quiet tone, as she saw the bright flame
+leap up and almost set her husband's beard on fire.  "Bob never fails!"
+
+The burning match was quickly plunged into Hayward's handful of
+shavings, which blazed up as he thrust it into Slag's nest; and Slag,
+holding the nest with the tender care of a loving sick-nurse, and the
+cool indifference of a salamander, till it was a flaming ball, crammed
+it into the heart of the pile of sticks.  Tremendous was the volume of
+smoke that arose from the pile, and anxious were the looks riveted on
+it.
+
+"Sure ye've smothered it intirely," gasped O'Connor.
+
+"Oh, me!" sighed Peggy in a voice of mild despair.
+
+"No fear, it's all right," said Massey, in a confident tone, while Joe
+Slag, on his knees, with cheeks inflated and nose all but kindling, blew
+at the glowing heart with unwearied determination, regardless alike of
+friend and foe.
+
+"It's going to do," remarked John Mitford in his most dismal tone.
+
+"Any child might tell that," said Nellie, with a light laugh.
+
+The laugh seemed infectious, for the whole party joined in as a glorious
+gush of flame rushed among the sticks, dried up the dampness, and
+effectually changed the pillar of smoke into a pillar of fire.
+
+The fire thus kindled was rightly deemed of such vital importance that
+it was not permitted to go out thereafter for many months, being watched
+night and day by members of the party appointed to the duty by turns.
+It had, indeed, not a few narrow escapes, and more than once succeeded
+in reaching what appeared to be its last spark, but was always caught in
+time and recovered, and thus was kept burning, until a discovery was
+made which rendered such constant attendance and care unnecessary.
+
+"Now," said Dr Hayward, when the fire was safely established, "we have
+not much daylight left, so it behoves us to make the most of it.  You
+are a man of action and experience, Robert Massey, what would you advise
+us to do first?"
+
+"Well, doctor, since you're good enough to ask me, I would advise that
+we should appoint a leader.  You see, mates," he continued, addressing
+himself to the company in general, "there's no possibility of a ship
+gettin' along without a captain, or an army without a general.  If we
+was going off to a wreck now, with or without a lifeboat, I would claim
+a sort o' right to be coxswain in virtue o' past experience; but, as
+we've now begun a sort o' shore-goin' business, which requires a deal o'
+general knowledge, besides seamanship, an' as Dr Hayward has got that
+by edication, I move that we make him our leader."
+
+"Right you are, Bob," said Joe Slag.  ("As he always is," said Nellie,
+_sotto voce_.) "So I second the move--if that's the reg'lar way to do
+it."
+
+"Hear, hear!" said every one with right good will, and a gleam of pride
+flashed from Eva's pretty brown eyes as her husband was thus unanimously
+appointed leader of the shipwrecked band.
+
+Like a sensible man, knowing his capacity, he at once accepted the
+command without any display of undue modesty, and proved his fitness by
+at once going to work.
+
+"The first thing, then, is to thank God for our deliverance, which we
+all do, I am sure, most heartily."
+
+This was received with a responsive "Amen" from every one--not even
+excepting Black Ned.
+
+"Next, we must find fresh water and boil a bit of pork--"
+
+"Ah, then, we haven't a kittle!" exclaimed O'Connor.
+
+"Haven't we a big baling-dish, Terrence?" said Hayward.
+
+"Sure we have, sor, an' it's a tin wan as'll stand fire," returned
+Terrence with a reproved look.
+
+"Well, then, you go fetch it; wash it well out, and get the pork ready.
+Jarring and Tomlin will gather as much dead wood as they can find and
+pile it beside the fire.  Mitford will search for fresh water--there
+must be a spring or brook not far off--and Massey and I will rig up some
+sort of shelter for the night."
+
+"Please, sir, may I go with Mitford to seek for water?" asked Nellie.
+
+"By all means, if you wish to."
+
+"And I will keep you company, Nell," said Mrs Hayward energetically.
+
+"So will I," chimed in little Mrs Mitford, feebly.  "I was always fond
+of water.  As a child I used to paddle about in it continually, an'
+sometimes tumbled into it, for of course young people will--"
+
+"No, Peggy, you must sit by the fire with my wife," said the doctor.
+"Neither of you is fit for work of any kind yet, so sit down and warm
+yourselves."
+
+Eva was too wise, and Peggy too weak, to offer objection, so these two
+sat by the fire while the others went to work.
+
+Energy of action tends to lighten the burdens that may be laid on human
+spirits, and to induce the most favourable view of the worst
+circumstances.  The toil which the party now undertook was such a
+blessed relief to them after the prolonged exposure to cold and
+comparative inaction in the boat, that all returned to the camp-fire in
+a much more cheerful state of mind than they left it.  The searchers for
+water came back first, having found what they sought close at hand; and
+Terrence, filling his baling-dish, soon had the pork boiling, along with
+some mysterious herbs gathered by the doctor to convert the liquid into
+soup.  Tomlin and Black Ned returned heavily laden with firewood, and
+Bob Massey discovered a tree with branches sufficiently spreading and
+leafy to protect them to some extent from rain.
+
+"'Tis as well we have found overhead protection, Massey," said the
+doctor, when our coxswain led him to the spot, "for I have been thinking
+that as we have no blankets, we shall be obliged to use our tarpaulin as
+a quilt rather than an umbrella."
+
+"That's true, sir," returned Massey, "but how about the women?"
+
+"Well, I've been thinking about that," said Hayward, "and I've devised a
+plan for to-night at least; to-morrow I hope to hit on a better
+arrangement.  First of all, we'll spread in front of a fire, which we
+will kindle beneath this tree, a layer of branches and grass.  In the
+middle of this the women will lie down side by side, after having dried
+and warmed themselves thoroughly at the fire.  Then we'll take two of
+the floor planks from the boat, and put one on each side of them--
+partially frame them, as it were.  Then one half of us men will lie down
+on one side of the frame, the other half on the other side, and we'll
+draw the tarpaulin over us all."
+
+"Hm! not very comfortable," said Massey, "for the poor women to be
+framed like that."
+
+"Admitted; but what else can we do?" said Hayward.  "It would risk our
+lives to sleep without covering of any kind in such cold weather, and
+with sleet falling as it does now.  Better have the sheet spread upon us
+than merely over our heads.  So now let's kindle another fire, and do
+you arrange our couch, Bob."
+
+In spite of the cold and the sleet, things looked much more cosy than
+persons unacquainted with "roughing it" could believe possible, and they
+became comparatively happy when the couch was spread, and they were
+seated under the sheltering tree, with the fire blazing and crackling in
+front of them, suffusing their faces and persons and the leaf-canopy
+overhead with a deep red glare, that contrasted well with the
+ebony-black surroundings, while a rich odour of pork soup exhaled from
+the baling-dish.
+
+"Ah! now there's nothin' wantin' to produce parfit felicity but a pipe,"
+said O'Connor with a sigh.
+
+"That's so, lad," assented Tomlin, echoing the sigh, and feeling in his
+pocket from force of habit, though he knew too well that nothing was to
+be found there.
+
+"Here, Terrence," said Massey, handing him an empty pipe, at the same
+time asking him to shut his eyes and draw, and try to imagine himself
+smoking, but Terrence shook his head.
+
+"I couldn't do that, Bob," he said, "but I'll sing ye a stave in praise
+o' the weed."
+
+Without waiting for permission, the jovial Irishman at once began:
+
+  "Oh! it's 'baccy as is my chief joy,
+  At mornin', noon and night;
+  An' it's verily my belief, boy,
+  That I love it with all my might.
+  If your liver an' lungs are squeakin',
+  An' your head is growin' cracky,
+  There's nothin' so sure to kill or cure,
+  As fumes o' the strongest 'baccy."
+
+"If it would improve your voice, Terrence," observed Mr Mitford,
+meekly, "I'm sure I wish ye had pounds of it, for it's that harsh--
+though, of course, I make no pretence to music myself, but--"
+
+"Just listen to that now, `Harsh!' an' that to a man whose own mother,
+by the father's side, towld him he shud make music his purfession!
+Arrah, howld on, Black Ned, ye spalpeen; ye've had two helpin's
+already!"
+
+This latter remark had reference to the baling-dish of soup which was
+being passed round the party, so that each might help himself to two
+mouthfuls of soup before passing it on.  As they had no spoons, the
+doctor had extemporised ladles of folded bark, which served the purpose
+pretty well.
+
+"Haven't ye a small bit o' 'baccy in the corner o' wan o' yer pockets,
+doctor, dear?" asked Terrence, insinuatingly.  "May be ye'd find a
+morsel if ye'd try."
+
+"Quite useless to try, my poor fellow," returned the doctor, with a look
+of affected pity, "for I'm a non-smoker.  I never indulge in such an
+absurdity."
+
+"Sure, it's a true proverb that says `doctor's differ,'" retorted
+O'Connor, "for most o' the saw-bones of my acquaintance have smoked like
+lime kilns."
+
+"More's the pity, Terrence, but if you'll heave on some more firewood
+you'll have a smoke that may do as a substitute at present."
+
+By heaping quantities of fresh branches on the fire till it was large
+enough to roast an ox, the party managed to pass the night in
+comparative comfort, in spite of cold and sleet.  Hayward watched the
+fire during the first part of the night.  Then he was relieved by our
+coxswain, who was succeeded by Joe Slag, and no Vestal virgins ever
+tended their fire with more anxious solicitude than those three men
+guarded theirs during that first night on the island.
+
+As if to make up for the sufferings of the past few days, the morning
+that followed broke with unclouded splendour, and the rising sun shone
+upon as beautiful a scene as could well be imagined, for it revealed an
+island richly clothed with verdure, which, rising out of a calm blue
+sea, sloped gradually upwards, until its western ridge met the bright
+sky.  Evidently that terminating ridge was the place whence descended
+the precipitous cliffs, along which they had sailed immediately after
+leaving the cave of the wreck.
+
+There is no accounting for the eccentricities of weak-minded females,
+whether pretty or plain.  The first thing that pretty little Mrs
+Mitford exclaimed on opening her eyes and beholding the glorious view
+was--
+
+"Oh!  I _do_ so wish that we had oysters for breakfast!"
+
+If she had expressed a desire for elephant chops, she could not have
+taken Eva Hayward more by surprise.  As for Nell Massey, she went off
+into a hilarious giggle.
+
+"I fear there are no oysters hereabouts," said Hayward, "but I shouldn't
+wonder if we were to find mussels and things of that sort.  Come, lads,
+we'll go and have a search for them, while the ladies fill and boil our
+kettle."
+
+Limpets, mussels, and other shell-fish were found in great abundance.
+With these warm soup was soon made, and after a hearty breakfast,
+Hayward organised the party in two bands which were sent off in
+different directions to explore the island, Peggy and her husband being
+left behind to cook the dinner and keep up the fire.
+
+
+
+STORY ONE, CHAPTER 9.
+
+For several days the shipwrecked party continued to live chiefly on
+limpets and mussels gathered on the sea-shore.  Only a very little of
+the pork was used, for the purpose of converting the food into soup.  As
+they could not tell, of course, how long they might be compelled to live
+there, it behoved them to be very careful of the food-supply already in
+possession.  Fortunately, the weather continued fine, though cold, so
+that it was not necessary at first to make any alteration in their camp
+arrangements.
+
+During this period much of their time was necessarily spent in laying in
+a stock of shell-fish, and in attempting to bring down with stones some
+of the gulls which flew inquisitively about and very temptingly near to
+the camp, but none of the party was a good marksman with stone
+ammunition, and it soon became evident that unless some other means of
+obtaining food were discovered there was every prospect of starvation
+ending their career.
+
+In this emergency Dr Hayward organised an exploring expedition on a
+more extended scale.  He divided the party into three bands--one
+consisting of Ned Jarring, Tomlin, and himself, to examine the shores;
+another comprising Joe Slag, John Mitford, and O'Connor, to penetrate
+the interior and higher lands; while it was appointed to Bob Massey, who
+had by that time come to be more frequently addressed by his old title
+of "coxswain," to stay at the camp, keep the all-important fire going,
+and guard the women.
+
+"You see, we must go about this business thoroughly," said the doctor,
+when they were all assembled in the camp one day after their frugal
+meal, excepting O'Connor, who was a short distance off, trying, with
+unwearied perseverance and unvaried failure, to kill gulls with stones.
+"And for this purpose, we must hold a council of war.  Where's
+Terrence?"
+
+"He's pelting the gulls as usual," said Black Ned.
+
+"A-missin' of 'em, you mean," suggested Mitford.
+
+"Hallo, Terrence!" shouted Hayward, catching sight of the Irishman at
+that moment.  "Here! we want you."
+
+"Comin', sor, jist wan more shot at this baste.  He's bin flyin' round
+me hid for half-an-hour at laste, winkin' at the stones as they go by
+him.  Och! missed again--bad luck to ye!"
+
+As he uttered the malediction the disappointed man heaved a last stone,
+angrily and without an attempt at an aim.  He did not even look up to
+observe the result, but turned sharply round towards the camp.
+
+That stone, however, was like the arrow shot at a venture.  It hit the
+bird full on the breast and brought it down, which fact was made known
+to the sportsman by a cheer from the camp and a heavy thud behind him.
+
+"Well done, Terrence!" cried Hayward as he came up with his prize.  "I
+regard it as a good omen--a sort of turn in the tide which will
+encourage us on our contemplated expedition."
+
+The leader then gave minute instructions as to how long they were to be
+away; how much food they were to take; the direction to be followed, and
+the work to be done.
+
+"In short," said the doctor in conclusion, "we must use our eyes, ears,
+and limbs to the best advantage; but bear in mind that the grand object
+of the expedition is--"
+
+"Grub," suggested O'Connor.
+
+"Just so.  Grub is our first and greatest necessity.  Meanwhile, Peggy,
+Nell, and Eva will do what they can to make our camp comfortable: gather
+mussels and other shell-fish and see that the coxswain does not eat more
+than a fair share of victuals, and conducts himself in all respects like
+an obedient and trusted servant."
+
+With such and similar touches of pleasantry Hayward sought to cheer the
+spirits of the party, and divert their minds from dwelling too much on
+the fact that their case was a very serious one--almost desperate, for
+they were on a comparatively small island, far to the southward of the
+usual track of ships, without food or shelter, and without any of the
+ordinary means of procuring either.
+
+The remainder of that day was spent in making preparation for the
+projected expedition.  As they had no offensive or defensive arms,
+except two gully knives, their first business was to provide each man
+with a spear.  Fortunately, some of the surrounding trees had very
+straight branches of various sizes, so they had only to cut down such as
+were suitable, and peel the bark off.  But the formation of hard points
+gave them some anxiety, until Tomlin hit upon the idea of utilising the
+bones of their pork.
+
+"The very thing!" said Mitford, with a look of melancholy satisfaction.
+
+Having no turn whatever for mechanics, he never saw difficulties till
+they met and overcame him, and was always ready to rush in where
+mechanical angels--if we may say so--feared to tread.
+
+"And how would you propose to cut the bones, John?" asked Slag, with an
+air of modest simplicity.
+
+"Cut 'em? eh! well--wi' the knife, of course."
+
+It was found, however, that the knife made but slight impression on the
+bones, and after one or two vain attempts, they turned to a more
+effective method.  Finding a huge boulder of some kind of sandstone they
+broke it up, and on the rough surface thus produced, ground the bones
+into sharp points, and by an ingenious method known to Slag, who learned
+it from the Eskimos, they fixed these firmly on the ends of their
+spears.
+
+Thus armed, and with a small quantity of cold pork, and a large
+allowance of cold boiled limpets and mussels in their wallets, they set
+out on their explorations.
+
+It is impossible to accompany two parties at once.  Let us follow just
+now the one composed of Joe Slag, Terrence O'Connor, and John Mitford.
+These, with Joe as their leader, proceeded along the shore some miles in
+a northerly direction; and then, turning into the bush, which was
+nowhere thick, they pushed into the interior of the island.  After
+advancing about ten miles they came on a wide stretch of sandhills or
+downs, and found that, having crossed a sort of isthmus, they had come
+out again on the sea-shore.
+
+"This won't do," said Slag, on making the discovery.  "We'll have to
+steer d'rect for the highest land."
+
+"That's so, Joe," said Mitford, "and yonder's a height away there, right
+in the wind's eye, that will act as a beacon to us."
+
+"I sees it, John--but, I say, what's the matter wi' Terrence?"
+
+This question was drawn forth by the action of the Irishman, who had
+walked on about fifty yards in advance of his comrades.  He was standing
+in the attitude of an ancient Roman about to discharge a javelin.
+Stooping low as if to render themselves less conspicuous, Mitford
+muttered, "hallo!" and his comrade whispered, "Sh! he sees suthin'!"
+
+Whatever it was he saw, O'Connor evidently felt too far off to act
+effectively, for, after standing a moment in the classic position just
+referred to, he suddenly lowered his spear, dropped on hands and knees,
+and made a slow, undignified advance of a few yards.  Then he rose
+again, became classic once more and discharged his spear, in a manner
+that would have done credit to Achilles himself.
+
+The growl that followed, and the "bad luck to ye," that came faintly
+back on the breeze, told too plainly that the result was a miss.
+
+"Sure it's a rabbit I saw," he said, returning to his companions, "an'
+if I'd only sent it two yards more to the left, I'd have hit the baste!"
+
+To the satisfaction of the explorers, it was found that the sandhills
+were burrowed all over by rabbits, and that there existed there a large
+colony of them.  Cheered by this--in spite of their bad javelin play--
+they made for the high ground, and soon found themselves threading a
+belt of wood, after crossing which they reached the foot of the range of
+hills that bounded the island to the westward.
+
+It was a weird, rugged spot, covered with great boulders that had rolled
+down the hill-sides, and with gaps and chasms here and there of
+considerable depth, that suggested the idea of volcanic action having
+visited the place at some remote period.  These chasms or rents in the
+earth were overgrown with trees or bushes in many places, and obliged
+the travellers to make wide detours in some places to avoid them.
+
+Thus they were so much delayed that night was upon them before they had
+reached the higher parts of the hill-range where they had intended to
+encamp.
+
+The difference between blanketing and gossamer is great, yet it is
+inconceivably slight compared with the difference between gossamer and
+nothing!  In the pride of their strength the members of the exploring
+party lay down to sleep without covering of any kind, for the good
+reason that they possessed none, and before morning they would gladly
+have given a fabulous price for even a gossamer coverlet.
+
+"It's freezin' I am, if not froze," said Terrence O'Connor at the end of
+the second sleepless hour.  "If we could have only brought away some o'
+the fire in our pockets, what a comfort it would have bin!"
+
+He got up, shook himself, and slapped his arms across his breast
+vigorously.
+
+Slag and Mitford followed his example.
+
+"I'm beginnin' to feel better on the outside," continued O'Connor,
+pausing, "but my spinal marrow isn't properly warm yet."
+
+"'Minds me o' Baffin's Bay," growled Slag, with a mighty slap of the
+arms between each word.
+
+Mitford seemed to think any remark superfluous, for he only groaned.
+
+"Pity it's too dark to see yer face, John," said Terrence.  "It must be
+a sight worth seein'.  Och, av I only had a good-sized pocket-han'kicher
+I'd wrap me feet in it, anyhow."
+
+"Suppose we cut some grass and try that?" suggested Mitford.
+
+The suggestion was acted on.
+
+It was slow work cutting grass with a clasp-knife; tearing it up in
+handfuls was still slower, but the labour warmed the tired explorers,
+and when they lay down again under this Adam-an'-Eveic bedding, they
+fell asleep almost immediately, and did not waken till the sun was
+pretty well up in the eastern sky.
+
+"Breakfast fust," said Slag, on completing a tremendous stretch and
+yawn.  "It's always bin my way since I was a babby--business first;
+pleasure to foller.  Grub is business, an' work is pleasure--leastwise,
+it ought to be to any man who's rated `A.  One' on the ship's books.
+Hallo! sorrowful-monkey-face, clap a stopper on yer nose an' tumble
+up,--d'ye hear?"
+
+Mitford did not hear, but a touch of Slag's toe caused him to feel and
+to rise.
+
+O'Connor was already astir, preparing breakfast.  Cold boiled mussels
+and a bit of pork may be good food, but it is not appetising.
+Consequently they did not linger long over the meal, but were soon
+striding up the mountain-side rejoicing in the fresh air and sunshine.
+
+There was a certain phase in John Mitford's character which had not yet
+been discovered by his friends, and was known only to his wife.  He was
+romantic--powerfully so.  To wander through unknown lands and be a
+discoverer had been the dream of his youth.  He was naturally reticent,
+and had never said so to any one but Peggy, who, being the reverse of
+romantic, was somewhat awe-stricken by the discovery, and, in an
+imbecile way, encouraged him to hope that, "one of these days he'd 'ave
+'is desires gratified, as there was nothink to prevent 'im from goin' to
+Novazealand--if that was the right way to pronounce it--or to Van Demons
+land--not in a sinful way of course, for they had given up transportin'
+people there now--though wherever they transported 'em to she couldn't
+imagine--anyhow, there was nothink to prevent his tryin'."  And John did
+try, which was the primary cause of his being a member of the exploring
+party now under consideration.
+
+Influenced by his romantic spirit, Mitford betrayed a troublesome
+tendency to wander from his comrades in pursuit of the Unknown.
+O'Connor, with the straightforward simplicity of his nation, set it down
+to pig-headedness.  Slag, being a man of feeling, opined that it was
+absence of mind.
+
+"The spalpeen! he's off again," said O'Connor, turning round as they
+halted to rest a minute, after breasting the hill for half-an-hour.
+"Hallo, John!  Where are ye, boy?"
+
+"Here--all right," shouted a voice in the distance, "I'm exploring
+behind the knoll here.  Go ahead; I'll meet ye at the top o' the hill."
+
+By that time they were within about an hour's walk of the highest ridge
+of the island, so they pushed on without delay, expecting to find their
+lugubrious friend there before them, or not far behind them.  It turned
+out as had been supposed.  The mountain ridge formed the summit of the
+great precipice, along the foot of which they had sailed after quitting
+the cavern, or, as they had come to call it, the wreck-cave.  For some
+time the two stood on the giddy edge, looking in silence on the
+tremendous depths below, and the sublime spectacle of illimitable sea
+beyond, with its myriad facets gleaming in the sunshine.
+
+Then they bethought them of their comrade, and turned back to look for
+him; hallooing now and then as they went, and expecting every moment to
+see him emerge from one of the gorges that led to the ridge.  But there
+was no answering shout, or any sign of his having been there.  Soon,
+becoming anxious and then alarmed, the two men set to work in earnest to
+search for their lost comrade, but they sought in vain.  Returning to
+the spot where they had last heard his voice, they continued the search
+in that direction, and made the rocks echo with their shouting.  Still
+no John Mitford was to be found, and the curious thing was that there
+seemed to be no very rugged or precipitous formation of land where he
+could easily have met with an accident.  At last, evening approached.
+
+"We must go back at wance," said O'Connor, with anxious looks, "an'
+rouse all the men out to seek for him wi' torches."
+
+Without another word they turned and made for the camp as fast as they
+could go.
+
+Meanwhile, Dr Hayward and his party had been successful in their
+exploration, for they not only discovered a rabbit-warren, but had
+observed seals basking on the rocks, and found the tracks of goats, or
+some animal of that kind with divided hoofs.  They had even succeeded in
+getting between a young seal and the water and speared it, so that there
+was something like jubilation in the camp on their return at the
+prospect of a fresh meal and better fare in future.
+
+But this was abruptly put an end to by the arrival of Slag and his
+comrade with the news of Mitford's disappearance.  Poor Mrs Mitford was
+thrown into a state of terrible alarm, and at first insisted on
+accompanying the search party, but under the united entreaties of Eva
+and Nelly she was prevailed on to remain behind.
+
+With torches made of resinous wood, which burnt admirably, they searched
+all that night, and, taking only a few hours' rest, continued the search
+all the following day, but without success.  Day after day the search
+was continued, even after all hope of ever again seeing their comrade
+alive had died out, but at last they were compelled to give it up and
+devote themselves to the urgent duty of procuring better shelter and
+food.
+
+As for poor Mrs Mitford, she sank into a state of helpless and hopeless
+despair.
+
+
+
+STORY ONE, CHAPTER 10.
+
+Men in straits cannot afford to sit down to grieve and mope over their
+sorrows.  Although a deep gloom had been cast over the shipwrecked party
+by the loss of one whom they had learned to respect, the urgent need of
+obtaining better food and shelter compelled them, as we have said, to
+give their whole mind and attention to this work.
+
+They pitied poor Peggy sincerely, however, and endeavoured to comfort
+her a little by raising the hope that her husband might have merely lost
+himself in the woods of the island, and would yet, perhaps, be found
+alive and well.  But, although their intentions were kindly, they could
+comfort neither Peggy nor themselves with such a hope; for their
+experience convinced them that the woods, although thick and tangled,
+were not extensive enough for any one to be permanently lost in them,
+and it seemed quite certain that if the lost man had not met with some
+fatal accident, he would certainly have made his way to the coast, by
+following which he could have easily found the camp.
+
+"It is very sad to give over our search for poor Mitford," said Dr
+Hayward one morning, while seated on a ledge of rock near the beach,
+taking counsel with his male companions as to the order of procedure for
+the day, "but we cannot afford to delay our operations longer.  This
+poor fare of mussel soup, with such a small allowance of pork, is
+beginning to injure the health of our women, not to mention ourselves;
+besides, the pork won't last long, even though we put ourselves on the
+shortest possible allowance; so I think that to-day we must go on an
+expedition after the seals we saw the last time we went to the southern
+end of the island.  What say you, comrades?"
+
+"All right, cap'n," answered Massey.  "You've only got to say the word.
+But who's to stop at home to mind the camp-fire and the women?"
+
+"I'm afraid," returned Hayward, with a deprecatory smile, "that it's
+your own turn, Bob.  I would say that I'm sorry for you, were it not
+ungallant to pity a man for being condemned for a day to female
+society."
+
+The way in which the coxswain received this showed that he did not
+repine at his fate.  He did not even object to O'Connor's remark that,
+"Faix, he might consider himself the luckiest man o' the lot!"
+
+Accordingly, Massey remained at the camp while the doctor, Slag,
+O'Connor, Tomlin, and Jarring set out on a hunting expedition with two
+days' cooked provisions in their wallets.  The doctor and Tomlin armed
+themselves with spears, but Jarring and Slag preferred clubs.
+
+"You see," said the latter, "I've heard--though I can't rightly say I've
+seed it done myself--that the seal-hunters o' the north do their work
+wi' clubs; so, if one man can kill a seal wi' such a thing, I don't see
+why another shouldn't."
+
+And, truly, there was some reason for this covert boast; for Joe,
+besides possessing arms of prodigious power, had cut and shaped for
+himself a knotted club which might have suited the hand of Hercules
+himself.
+
+It turned out that Bob Massey's satisfaction at being left behind that
+day was not altogether the result of regard for female society.  While
+he was sauntering back to the camp, after his comrades had left, he
+congratulated himself aloud on having at last a chance of making his
+experiment without being laughed at during the trial.  "That is--if
+Nellie has got enough of line made."
+
+At that moment Nell was busy with the line in question, and at the same
+time doing her best to comfort Mrs Mitford--Mrs Hayward being engaged
+in preparing dinner; by no means a difficult duty, which the women
+undertook day about.
+
+"Keep up your spirits, dear Peggy," said Nell, in that sweet, cosy
+tone--if we may say so--which played such havoc in Bob's bosom at the
+time when she was known as the coxswain's bride.  "I feel _sure_ that
+your dear husband will return to us.  No doubt, some sort o' misfortune
+has come to him; but he's such a sensible, handy man, is John, that I
+can't help feelin' he'll come back to us; an' when I _feel_ anything
+very strongly, d'ee know, I've almost always found it come true.  Do you
+believe in strong feelin', Peggy?"
+
+Poor Mrs Mitford, who had been sitting with her hands clasped in her
+lap, and an utterly woebegone expression on her pale face, raised her
+head with a troubled look on being thus directly appealed to.
+
+"Believe in strong feelin's, Nellie?  I should just think I do.  Not to
+mention my own feelin's--which are so strong that I never felt nothink
+like 'em before--any one who has been married to my John must know well
+what st-strong--oh! no, I shall never see 'im again; dear Nellie, don't
+tell me," she said, beginning to cry.  "I know--I know--"
+
+"There, now--there's a good soul.  Don't go off again.  Look!  D'ee know
+what this is for?"
+
+As she spoke, Nellie held up a ball of what appeared to be twine, and
+her companion--whose mind resembled that of a child, in that it could be
+easily diverted--said no, she didn't know what it was for, and that she,
+(Peggy), had seen her making it when the men were off excursioning, and
+had asked about it; and why didn't she, (Nellie), relieve her curiosity
+before, upon the point, instead of waitin' till now?
+
+"Well, you see, Peggy," replied her friend, with the confidential air of
+one who has a secret to tell, "my Bob has took it into his head to give
+his mates a surprise by fishin' for albatrosses."
+
+"Lawks!  Nellie, an' that _will_ give 'em a surprise!" interrupted Mrs
+Mitford, drying her eyes.  "How ever can any man _fish_ for a bird--
+unless, indeed, it goes under water an' changes its nature, which no
+creetur can do; though, now I come to think of it, I have seen flyin'
+fish, an' so, perhaps, there may be albytresses, or other birds, that--"
+
+"Hallo!  Nellie, hard at the twine, lass?  You've made about enough of
+it now," cried our coxswain, entering the camp at that moment, sitting
+down beside his wife, and examining the ball of cord which she had been
+so busily spinning.
+
+"I'm glad you think there's enough, Bob, for I've come to the end o' the
+stuff you gathered for me."
+
+"Plenty more where that came from, Nell; but there's no need to gather
+more than enough; for enough, you know, is as good as a feast.  Well,
+Peggy," he added, turning to the poor woman, and patting her gently on
+the shoulder, "has Nell been tellin' you what I'm goin' to try?"
+
+"She was beginnin' to tell me, Mr Massey, when you came in, something
+about fishin' for albytresses, an' I always thought albytresses was
+birds, and--"
+
+"Quite right, Peggy.  See, this is how it is: you bait a hook--but
+come," said the coxswain, rising suddenly, and taking up the ball of
+twine, "they do say example's better than precept.  Come along wi' me
+an' Nell, an' we'll show you how to do it."
+
+So saying, Massey led the two women down to the boat, telling Mrs
+Hayward, whom they passed on the way, to heave some more sticks on the
+fire, as it was getting low.
+
+"Never fear," said Eva, who carried the baling-dish full of shell-fish
+in her hands.  "I shall never forget the fright we got that time Joe let
+it get so low that it was almost at the last spark.  You won't be long
+away, will you?"
+
+"Not long.  Anyhow, we'll be sure to turn up for dinner."
+
+During their short residence on the island, the coxswain had observed
+that albatrosses paid them frequent visits.  The giant birds had
+exhibited some signs of curiosity as to the doings of the new arrivals
+on the island; so he resolved to capture one of them, with a view to
+soup!
+
+Embarking in the boat, he rowed towards a point of rocks jutting out
+into the sea, over which albatrosses had been seen hovering many times.
+On the way, Nellie, who had previously been taught what to do, fastened
+a small bit of wood to the end of the line she had spun.  Hanging from
+this was a hook that the coxswain had made from a gull's breast-bone.
+It was baited with a piece of pork.  Before arriving at the point of
+rocks, they saw that an albatross was soaring over it on its mighty
+outspread wings.  On observing the boat, it flew away and disappeared in
+the distance; but Bob was not much concerned about that.
+
+"Now, Nell," he said, on landing, "carry this bait out to sea as far as
+the line will let you, lay it on the water, an' then pull back into yon
+cove, and see that you hide the boat an' yourselves well, and keep
+quiet.  You mustn't even talk, Peggy!  Yon fellow will soon be back."
+
+Nellie did exactly as she was directed; and then her husband, holding
+the shore-end of the line, concealed himself among the rocks.
+
+He was right about the bird.  Ere long, it was seen returning, and soon,
+on motionless, expanded wings, it hovered over the rocky point.  Then it
+caught sight of the floating bait.  With a majestic swoop, it dived,
+caught it up, and next moment was flouncing wildly about, hooked by the
+tongue, while Bob Massey hauled in the line.  He had provided himself
+with a stick, and when the huge bird came within reach he felled it, to
+the immense delight of the watchers in the cove, who had already begun
+to smell savoury soup by anticipation!
+
+While these were thus engaged, the sealing party was even more
+successful in the opposite direction.  They had not gone half-a-dozen
+miles when they sighted a group of seals, sleeping--or sunning
+themselves--on a flat rock, near high-water mark.
+
+"Now, then, Hercules, lead the way with your club," said the doctor to
+Joe Slag, in a whisper.  Joe at once shouldered his weapon and led the
+party round by some sheltering rocks, so as to get between the seals and
+the sea; then, rushing forward in a body, they took the creatures by
+surprise, and intercepted two of them.  On coming to close quarters,
+however, they found that the seals were much more formidable to look at
+than anything that any of them had ever seen in the Arctic Seas; and
+when Joe brought his club down on the skull of the foremost with a
+terrible thwack, it refused to tumble over, but continued to splutter
+and flounder towards the sea.  Dr Hayward, however, used his spear at
+this moment with such effect that the seal fell, and another blow from
+the Herculean club finished its career.
+
+As this animal was about half-a-ton in weight, they left it on the beach
+with the intention of cutting off some steaks on their return, and
+sending the boat round afterwards to fetch the remainder of the carcass.
+
+Considerably elated by their success, they pushed on.  In a valley which
+led towards the interior hills they found fresh tracks of goats, and saw
+one of those animals in the distance.  Rabbits were also seen, but none
+killed at that time.  They had not gone far into this valley, when a
+most interesting discovery was made.  On opening up a new turn in the
+valley they came on the ruins of a hut.
+
+With feelings of profound interest, they entered--for there was no door
+to bar their progress--and gazed around on the silent, mouldering walls.
+
+"Good luck!" exclaimed O'Connor, springing forward, and grasping an
+object which lay on the ground.  It was a hatchet, covered with red
+rust.  "Here is something else that will be useful," said Tomlin,
+picking up a file, which was also covered with rust.
+
+The party at once began an eager search in the hope of finding other
+things that might be of use to them, and they were not altogether
+disappointed; for Jarring found a clasp-knife--much rust-eaten, of
+course, but still fit for use.  Slag found a much-battered frying-pan,
+and Tomlin discovered a large cast-iron pot behind the hut, with a chip
+out of its rim.  A bottle was also found, and the party crowded round to
+watch while the doctor examined it.
+
+"Gin, I hope," said Jarring, in a low tone.
+
+"Physic, I think," murmured Slag.
+
+"A paper!" exclaimed the doctor, holding it up to the light; then,
+breaking the bottle, he unfolded the paper, but much of the writing on
+it had been obliterated by water which had leaked in.  The few
+sentences, however, that were more or less legible, conveyed the fact
+that a vessel had been wrecked on the island in 1848; that the crew had
+lived there eighteen months when a ship, chancing to pass that way,
+rescued them; that they had no provisions to leave for the use of
+unfortunates who might chance to be cast away there in future; and that
+there was a garden, with some vegetables in it, about--
+
+Here the writing became quite illegible.
+
+"Now, we must find that garden," said the doctor, "and as we've not much
+daylight left, we must begin at once.  Come along, lads."
+
+In half an hour they found the garden, with potatoes growing in it, and
+a few other roots that were new to them.
+
+Rejoicing over their discoveries the party started back without delay
+for the camp, carrying the pot, the frying-pan, etcetera, along with
+them, and not forgetting a good slice of the seal in passing.  Arriving
+late that night, they found Bob Massey and the women already enjoying a
+supper of albatross soup.
+
+"Hooroo, Bob!" exclaimed O'Connor, flourishing the frying-pan in his
+excitement, "we've found some praties, boy!  Shovel out some o' that
+into this, honey, an' I'll soon let ye smell the smell of an Irish
+stew!"
+
+Next day the party removed from the camp and took up their abode in the
+old hut, which was soon repaired sufficiently to keep out wind and rain,
+and the skin of the seal--with that of another killed next day--was
+large enough to screen off part of the hut as a separate chamber for the
+women.
+
+From that time forward they had no lack of food, for they succeeded in
+killing plenty of seals, and in snaring a great many rabbits, though
+they failed entirely to kill any of the goats.  And thus they lived for
+several months in comparative comfort, though suffering considerably
+from cold and bad weather.
+
+During all that time the poor women were kept pretty busy cooking,
+looking after domestic matters, and mending the garments of the men.
+This last they accomplished by means of needles made from albatross
+bones and the finely divided sinews of various animals, instead of
+thread.  When the European garments were worn out--which they were, long
+before deliverance was sent to them--Nell Massey proved her fitness for
+a Robinson Crusoe life, by actually splitting the sealskins--which were
+as thick as sole leather--so as to obtain material thin enough for
+clothing.
+
+Of course, a flagstaff had been among the first things erected.  It
+stood on a prominent hill, and a seal-skin flag was hoisted thereon, to
+attract any vessel that might chance to pass that way, but the flag
+fluttered in vain, for, as we have said, the island lay far out of the
+usual track of commerce.
+
+Although poor Mrs Mitford appeared to become resigned to her great loss
+as time passed by, it was evident to her kind-hearted female companions
+that she was not recovering from the shock she had received.  In spite
+of their care of her she grew thinner and older-looking every day, and
+although she quietly took her share of the work, she had become sad and
+silent--caring little apparently for what was going on around her, and
+never indulging in those prolonged observations of an irrelevant nature,
+to which she had been addicted before her husband's disappearance.
+
+Things were in this state when, about two months after their landing, a
+boat-voyage to the western cliffs of the island was arranged for
+purposes of further exploration.
+
+
+
+STORY ONE, CHAPTER 11.
+
+Within the dark recesses of a great cavern in the western cliffs, in the
+midst of a mass of wreckage, there sat one morning a man whose general
+appearance might have suggested to a beholder "the wild man of the
+cave"--or, at the least, an unhappy maniac--for his grey locks were long
+and unkempt, his eyes bloodshot and wild, his garments torn, so that his
+wasted limbs were exposed in numerous places, and his beard and
+moustache dishevelled and bristling.
+
+No one looking at that gaunt creature--not even the mother who bore
+him--would have easily recognised John Mitford; yet it was he.
+
+On the day when he mysteriously disappeared he had come upon a great
+hollow, or hole, of about sixty yards in diameter, which appeared to
+descend into the very depths of the earth.  The sides of the hollow
+sloped towards the centre, and were covered with bushes.  Noting this,
+our romantic friend resolved to explore the spot.  He descended
+cautiously till he came to a place where the hole had narrowed to about
+twenty feet in diameter, and the herbage ceased because of the absence
+of the earth to sustain it.  Filled with eager curiosity, the reckless
+man held on to a branch and stretched his head over the edge of the
+hole.  He saw nothing but blackness.  He soon felt something, however,
+for the branch suddenly broke off, and John went headlong down into that
+hole!
+
+Then and there he would certainly have paid for his curiosity with his
+life, had not a mass of earth, a few feet further down, and against
+which he struck, broken his fall in some measure, and shunted him off to
+the opposite wall of the rock.  This latter proved to be a slope so
+steep that it let him slide, like lightning, to the bottom, a depth of
+about thirty feet or more, where he was stopped with such violence that
+he lay stunned for a considerable time.
+
+Recovering, he found that no bones were broken, and that, indeed, he was
+not much damaged considering the violence of the fall; but the
+satisfaction and thankfulness that this undoubtedly caused him were
+diminished by the fact that he was in total darkness, and at the bottom
+of a hole of unknown depth.  A feeling of horror rushed over him at the
+thought of being thus, as it were, buried alive.  Springing up, he felt
+all round the walls of his prison for some inequalities or projections,
+by which he might climb out, but none such could he find.  The place was
+like a well of not more than about ten feet wide, with smooth rocky
+sides, which were almost perpendicular as far up as he could reach.  On
+looking upward, he could see the mouth of the hole, through which he had
+fallen, glimmering like a little star above him.
+
+After a fruitless search of nearly half-an-hour the poor man sat down on
+a piece of fallen rock, over which he had stumbled several times in his
+search, and a deep groan burst from him as he began to realise the fact
+that escape from the place was impossible, and that a lingering death
+awaited him--for he could scarcely hope that his companions would find
+him in such a place.  Hope, however, is hard to kill in the human
+breast.  Perhaps they might hear him if he shouted.  Immediately he
+began to shout for help with all the strength of his lungs.  Then, as no
+answering shout came down from the little star above--at which he
+continuously gazed--a feeling of wild despair took possession of him,
+and he yelled and shrieked in mortal agony until his vocal chords
+refused to act, and nothing but a hoarse whisper passed his parched
+lips.  Overcome at last, alike with horror and exhaustion, he fell to
+the ground and became partially unconscious.
+
+How long he lay thus he could not tell; but, on recovering and looking
+up, he found that the star was gone--telling plainly that night had set
+in.
+
+Then it was, when all hope of delivering himself, or of being delivered
+by others, had fled, that a word which had been uttered by Dr Hayward
+to a dying man on board the ship, leaped into John Mitford's mind like a
+gleam of light.  "Call upon Me in the time of trouble and I will deliver
+thee, and thou shalt glorify Me."  He had seen this invitation accepted
+by the dying man and deliverance obtained--if a happy smile and a
+triumphant gaze across the river of death were to be regarded as
+testimony.  "But, then," thought John Mitford, "that was spiritual
+deliverance.  Here it is a hard physical fact, from which nothing short
+of a miracle can deliver me.  No--it is impossible!"
+
+Was it a voice within him, or an old memory, that immediately whispered
+the words, "With God all things are possible?"  At all events, the poor
+man rose up slowly in a somewhat calmer frame of mind, and began once
+more to feel round the walls of his narrow prison.  He found nothing
+mew, save that once he narrowly escaped falling down what seemed to be a
+still deeper hole among the fallen rocks already referred to.  Then he
+lay down--or rather fell on the floor exhausted--and slept till morning.
+The fact that another day had begun was only ascertainable by the
+shining of the star-like mouth of the hole.  He attempted again to
+shout, but found that his voice had left him, and that even if his
+comrades should return to the place he could not make them hear!  In the
+fit of despair which followed he went round and round his living tomb
+like some wild beast in a cage.  During one of these perambulations, he
+stumbled again over the fallen rocks, dropped into the hole behind them,
+and slid a few feet downwards, but not rapidly, for the slope was
+gradual, and it terminated on a flat floor.  Looking cautiously round,
+on reaching this lower depth, he saw what appeared to be a faint light
+far beneath him, and considerably in advance of the spot where he stood,
+or rather to which he clung.
+
+Gradually his mind calmed, and, resolving to make for this light, he
+groped his way downward.  It was a long and wearisome scramble,
+involving many a slip and slide, and not a few falls, (for it was made,
+of course, in total darkness), and the distant light did not appear to
+become stronger or nearer.  At last it seemed as though it were growing.
+Then John found himself on ground over which he could walk, guiding
+himself by touching perpendicular walls of rock on either side with his
+hands.  It was a great split in the mountain, caused perhaps by those
+mighty subterranean forces, which some men recognise as volcanic action,
+whilst others, admitting--but passing beyond--second causes, recognise
+them as tools with which God is moulding this world according to His
+will.
+
+"Strange!" thought the man, as he moved slowly forward.  "Was this split
+made hundreds--perhaps thousands--of years ago, for the purpose of
+enabling me to escape?"
+
+"Certainly not--absurd, presumptuous idea," answered Unbelief, smartly.
+
+"It was," remarked Faith, slowly, "made, no doubt, for hundreds--it may
+be millions--of other purposes, but among these purposes the saving of
+your life was certainly in the mind of Him who `knows all things from
+the beginning,' and with whom even the falling of a sparrow is a matter
+for consideration."
+
+We do not assert that John Mitford's reasoning took the precise form of
+these words, for many minds can think somewhat profoundly without being
+able to express themselves clearly; but some such thoughts undoubtedly
+coursed through John's mind, as he moved through that subterranean
+labyrinth, and finally emerged--through a narrow crack, not so large as
+an ordinary door--upon the inner margin of a stupendous cavern.
+
+With a fervent "Thank God!" and a hopeful leap of the heart, the poor
+man beheld the waters of the sea rushing up to his very feet; and beyond
+the cave's mouth lay the grand ocean itself, like a bright picture in a
+black frame.  But what was that projecting from the water, not twenty
+yards from where he stood?  The broken mast of a sunken wreck!
+Mitford's heart almost stood still, for he became aware that he had made
+his way to the very cavern, in which the ill-fated _Lapwing_ had met her
+doom, and around him were masses of wreckage that had been washed up and
+thrown on the rocks at the inner end of the cave where he stood.
+
+An involuntary shudder passed through the man's frame as he glanced
+round expecting to see the dead bodies of his late shipmates.  But
+nothing of the kind was visible, and the spars, masts, and other
+wreckage which had reached the rocks had been shattered into "matchwood"
+by frequent gales.
+
+John Mitford now hastened in eager hope along the sides of the cave
+towards its mouth, intending to go out to the base of the cliffs,
+forgetting, in his eagerness, that the mouth could not be reached
+without a boat.  He soon discovered this, and was then thrown into
+another fit of despair by remembering that he could not swim.
+
+Oh! how bitterly he blamed himself for having neglected to acquire such
+a simple accomplishment.  He might have learnt it when young, had he not
+been indifferent, or lazy about it.  Often had he been advised to learn
+it by companions, but had treated the matter lightly and let the chance
+go by--and now, only fifty yards or so of deep water intervened between
+the end of the ledges of rock and the outside of the cavern, where he
+might perhaps find foothold enough to scramble along the base of the
+cliffs--but those fifty yards were equal to the Atlantic to him, he
+could not swim that distance to save his life.  Once or twice, in a fit
+of desperation, he had almost plunged in to attempt it, and take his
+chance.  Fortunately his courage failed.  Had he taken the plunge his
+fate would no doubt have been sealed.
+
+Returning to the inner end of the cave he searched among the wreckage
+for wood, with which to make a raft, but it was so shattered that he
+found no pieces large enough to be thus used.  He found, however, a
+barrel of pork and another of pease jammed into a crevice.  These proved
+an immense relief to his feelings, for they secured him against absolute
+starvation, which he had begun to think stared him in the face.
+
+From that time forward the unfortunate man made incessant and wild
+efforts to get out of the cave.  He climbed and scrambled about until
+his clothes were almost torn off his back.  He gathered the largest
+masses of wood he could find and tied them together in bundles, until he
+had made something like a raft; but John was not a handy workman; his
+raft overturned the first time he tried it, and went to pieces, and he
+would have been drowned at that time if he had not been within grasping
+distance of the rocks.  As it was, he got a fright which made him
+finally turn from that method of escape in despair.
+
+Then the raw pork and hard pease tried him severely, and brought on a
+complaint which lasted a considerable time and greatly reduced his
+strength, but John was tough, and recovered--though not much more than
+the skeleton of his former self remained.
+
+Thus he continued to exist in that cavern, during all the time that his
+wife and friends were mourning him as dead; and in this condition was he
+there seated, on the morning in which this chapter opens.
+
+"Weary, weary--desolation!" moaned the unfortunate man, lifting his head
+and gazing round, with the air of one from whom all hope has long since
+departed.
+
+It is said, or supposed, that when a spoke in Fortune's wheel is at the
+lowest, there must needs be a rise.  Mitford's experience at this time
+would seem to give ground for belief in the saying; for the word
+"desolation" had scarcely passed his lips, when distant voices of men
+were heard, causing his heart to bound violently.  Next moment a boat
+glided in front of the cave's mouth.
+
+John Mitford sprang up and gave vent to a yell!
+
+Hope raised to strong life after being long deferred; despair suddenly
+trampled in the dust; joy bounding as from the tomb into rampant being--
+and a host of indescribable sentiments and passions found vent in that
+tremendous, that inconceivable howl!
+
+And its effect on those in the boat?--Well--
+
+That morning our exploring party had resumed their voyage with somewhat
+saddened hearts, for they remembered the look of the coast well, and
+knew that an hour or so would bring them to the cave where the _Lapwing_
+had gone down.  Even Black Ned had become sentimental, and given vent to
+a few expressions of a semi-religious nature!
+
+"We can't be far from it now," said Dr Hayward, as the men ceased
+rowing, and the boat glided slowly, silently along.
+
+"It's a gruesome place," remarked Black Ned, in a low voice.
+
+"To think that so many lives were lost here--or hereabouts," murmured
+Tomlin.
+
+"An' their ghost, maybe, hangin' about!" suggested Slag, with a
+superstitious glance over his shoulder.
+
+Just then Hayward bade O'Connor get up and stand in the bow with the
+boat-hook, ready to fend off,--an order which the Irishman, having been
+somewhat awed by the tone of the conversation, obeyed in silence.
+
+It was at this point that they glided in front of the cave, and drew
+forth the yell which burst upon them like a clap of thunder.  The shock
+to the nervous system of each was terrific.  In the case of O'Connor it
+was visible, for he fell flat back into the bottom of the boat and
+fetched Jarring a tremendous whack on the head with the boat-hook in
+falling.  Afterwards, Terrence asserted stoutly that a slip of the foot
+as he stood on the th'ort was the cause, but those who knew him best
+held that it was "a case of nerves."
+
+Need it be said that, on recovering nervous equilibrium, the joy of
+rescuers and rescued was intense?
+
+"Come along, let's take 'im home at wanst," cried the Irishman, when
+they had got the poor dazed man into the boat.  "Isn't it Peggy that'll
+open her eyes an' screech for joy when she sots her eyes on ye!"
+
+"We'll have to wash and comb an' clothe him first," said Tomlin.
+
+He did not say "shave," for they had no razors,--and by that time the
+beards of most of the party were as long as Mitford's; but their locks
+had been trimmed by means of a clasp-knife super-sharpened, whereas
+Mitford's were in wildest disorder.
+
+That night they encamped in the wreck-cave, made a fire, and prepared a
+splendid supper of pork and pea-soup for John and themselves, after
+which they subjected their recovered comrade to a scrubbing and cropping
+and repairing of habiliments that almost proved fatal to his
+constitution.  Next day they loaded the boat with all the pork and pease
+they could find, as well as portions of cordage that might be useful.
+Then they started off on the return journey.
+
+It was a fine day when they reached the encampment, where the coxswain
+and the women were on the look-out.  Massey, of course, was the first to
+observe, as the boat approached, that an extra hand was in it; but he
+wisely said nothing at first.  Then his heart began to beat as it used
+to do when he brought in rescued men and women from wrecks, for the
+truth suddenly flashed upon him.  He glanced at Peggy.  Poor thing, her
+sad eyes had wandered from the approaching boat and were resting
+wistfully on the horizon beyond.
+
+"Nell," murmured the coxswain in a deep, earnest whisper to his wife,
+who stood at his elbow, "the tide's a-goin' to rise again wi' poor
+Peggy, if my eyes are tellin' truth."
+
+"What d'ee mean, Bob?" asked Nellie, with a quick, anxious look.
+
+"Five men went away, Nell; _six_ are comin' back!"
+
+As he spoke, a tall figure rose up in the stern of the boat and waved a
+hand.
+
+Nellie glanced quickly at her friend.  She was standing with glaring
+eyes, parted lips, and a deathly pallor on her worn face.
+
+"Peggy!"
+
+The familiar word came rolling to the shore, and a piercing shriek
+replied to it as the poor woman threw up both hands and fell backward
+into the ready arms of the coxswain's wife, who had sprung to her side
+in anticipation of some such catastrophe.
+
+There was the voice of prayer and thanksgiving that night in the hut on
+the lonely shore--such thanksgiving as we might conceive filled the
+hearts of Jairus and of the widow of Nain in the days of old.
+
+
+
+STORY ONE, CHAPTER 12.
+
+The state of things on the island was now considerably improved.  Peggy,
+under the influence of gratitude for restored felicity, became more
+helpful than she had formerly been, and more loquacious than ever.  Her
+female companions, being amiable and easily pleased, were rather amused
+than otherwise, at the continuous flow of discursive, sometimes
+incomprehensible, and always good-natured small talk--particularly small
+talk--with which she beguiled the hours that might have otherwise hung
+heavily on their minds while their hands were busily engaged with the
+bone-needles and sinew threads which the coxswain had manufactured for
+them.  For the clothes with which they had landed on the island--
+especially those of the men--had begun to wear out after eight or ten
+months, and new garments had to be made, while repairs never ceased.
+
+Meanwhile, the men were fully occupied each day in hunting seals or
+fishing, cutting firewood with the axe they had found in the hut, and in
+making their home more comfortable.  A door was fitted to the hut; a
+wooden partition was put up to cut off more effectually the women's
+apartment from that of the men; the open crevices in the walls were
+stopped up with moss, and many other improvements were made.  A few
+nails extracted from the walls of the hut were converted into
+fish-hooks, by means of the file which had been found, and Nellie spun
+some excellent fishing-lines from flax found growing wild in abundance.
+The file also enabled them to strike fire with broken flints picked up
+on the shore.  The ash of burnt cotton, as the doctor knew, makes good
+tinder; so in the public interest, John Mitford agreed to part with the
+ragged remains of the cotton shirt he had long worn--quite
+unnecessarily--over his woollen jersey.  Thus they could afford to let
+the fire go out, and were relieved from constant watching, as well as
+anxiety in regard to it.
+
+They did not, however, cease their nocturnal vigils, for the hope of
+deliverance never died out, though it at last sank very low.  Besides
+keeping their seal-skin flag flying, they kindled a beacon-fire every
+night, to guard and replenish which became the nightly duty of one or
+other of the men--watch and watch about--all the time they stayed on the
+island.
+
+During the earlier part of each night, however, the beacon-fire was not
+watched.  It was merely lighted and left for some hours to look after
+itself.  During this period, after supper, the whole party were wont to
+draw round the blazing fire in the hut, and each contributed his or her
+share to the entertainment of the social circle.  Then it was that
+lugubrious John Mitford developed amazing powers of inventive
+story-telling, and Joe Slag came out strong with thrilling lifeboat
+tales, every word of which Bob Massey corroborated, while Terrence
+O'Connor displayed powers of sarcastic criticism of the highest order,
+and Tomlin, Black Ned, and the women proved an intensely appreciative
+audience.  But the latter were not merely listeners.  True, Peggy did
+nothing for the general good.  Having quite exhausted her lungs with
+incessant talk during each day, she was fortunately almost incapable of
+speech in the evening, but Nellie, who possessed a voice as sweet as
+herself, and clear and true as that of a nightingale, was induced to
+"favour the company"--chiefly with pathetic or patriotic ditties and
+hymns--while Eva thrilled her audience with terrible tales of slavery,
+in many of which she had acted a part.  Of course Dr Hayward lent his
+aid, both with song and story; but, like a true leader, he devoted
+himself chiefly to drawing out the powers of his companions, directing
+or diverting the flow of conversation, and keeping order.  He also
+instituted what may be truly styled family worship at night, by
+repeating from memory portions of the word of, God and engaging in
+prayer just before retiring to rest.  Bob Massey and Tomlin were induced
+to help him in this, and never was a prayer put up from that hut in
+which there was not an earnest petition that a ship might be sent for
+their deliverance.
+
+"But a ship is long, long o' comin'," said Slag to Jarring as he
+accompanied the latter part of the way to the beacon-fire one night when
+it was Black Ned's turn to watch.
+
+"A ship'll come, Joe, when God sees fit to send it," said Ned.
+
+Slag glanced at his comrade in surprise, the reply was so very unlike
+Ned's usual style of speech that he felt uncertain whether it was
+uttered in earnest.
+
+"The only thing I feel an awful longin' for now, at times, is a bit o'
+'baccy," continued Ned.
+
+"So does I, Ned, an' I sometimes think Dr Hayward has got the advantage
+of us there, for he never smoked, so he says, an' in coorse it stands to
+reason that he can't have no longin' for a thing he don't want--an' he
+seems as jolly an' happy as the best of us without it!"
+
+"Ay, jollier and happier!" replied Ned, shortly.
+
+"But, I say, Ned, don't ye ever feel a longin' for grog?  Ye used to be
+raither fond of it."
+
+"No--not now, Joe.  It's the best thing as ever happened to me, bein'
+cast on this here island--wi' Dr Hayward to give a feller a word of
+advice."
+
+Slag, who felt a sort of self-righteous superiority over his comrade,
+inasmuch as _he_ had never given way to drink, said, "You should be
+thankful for that, Ned."
+
+"I _am_ thankful," returned the other in a tone that induced Slag to say
+no more.
+
+It was a very dark night, and cold, so that Black Ned involuntarily
+shuddered as he approached the beacon-fire alone--Joe having left him--
+and commenced to heap on fuel.  Then rain began to fall heavily.  There
+was no shelter, and the watchman was soon drenched to the skin.  Heaping
+on more logs till the fire roared again, he tried to warm himself, and
+stood so close to the blaze that his garments smoked--they would have
+burnt had they not been wet--but no heat seemed to penetrate the
+shivering frame of Black Ned.
+
+Next morning the poor man was smitten with a raging fever.  From the
+first the doctor had little hope of his recovery.  With a constitution
+fatally injured by dissipation and drink, his chance was very small; but
+of course every effort was made to save him.  He was laid on a soft bed
+of moss in the warmest corner of the hut, and the women took their turn
+in nursing him, night and day--the coxswain's wife, however, being the
+chief nurse; for, besides being sympathetic and tender by nature, she
+had been trained in a rough school where self-reliance and capacity were
+constantly called into action in circumstances of difficulty, so that
+she was better fitted for the post than either of her companions.  But
+their efforts were of no avail.  After a week, Black Ned died, with a
+smile of gratitude on his dark face as he gazed in Hayward's eyes, and
+held his hand until the spirit returned to God who gave it.
+
+The gloom cast over the little community by this sudden appearance of
+the King of Terrors lasted for many days, and had the good effect of
+turning the thoughts of all of them to those subjects which are
+obviously and naturally distasteful to fallen man--the soul and the
+world to come.  But gradually the gloom passed away, though it left in
+the party a greater longing than ever to escape from their island
+prison.
+
+One day, while some of them were at breakfast, Terrence O'Connor rushed
+into the hut with the news that a ship was in sight!  Instantly the boat
+was manned, and they rowed with all their might towards the vessel,
+which was seen like a white speck on the horizon.  They rowed to within
+four miles of her, with an oar set up as a mast, and a jacket attached
+thereto as a flag, but a breeze sprang up, and the strange sail actually
+passed on without taking the slightest notice of them--though the people
+on board could not have failed to see the boat!
+
+Profound was the disappointment, and violent the indignation, that
+filled the thoughts of the castaways as they rowed slowly back to land.
+
+"Sure it's devils that must live in the bodies o' some men," growled
+O'Connor, in the bitterness of his soul.
+
+"You're too hard on the devils, Terrence," said Bob Massey.  "Some men
+in this world do the worst _that they can_, an' surely devils can do no
+more than that."
+
+This incident, however, aroused the hopes and expectations of the party
+to a high pitch, so that the beacon-fire was kept burning more steadily
+and brightly than before, and the look-out hill was more frequently
+visited; still, weeks and months passed by, and no deliverance came to
+them.
+
+During this period, the seal-hunting, fishing, clothes-mending,
+etcetera, were carried on with unflagging energy, and the nightly
+entertainments became more and more entertaining, by reason of use and
+effort developing new capacities and talents that might in less
+favourable circumstances have lain altogether dormant.  All this was due
+very much to their leader; for, besides being a God-fearing man, Hayward
+was pre-eminently cheery, and full of fun as well as vigour.  The
+coxswain, too, was like-minded, and of great capacity in every way;
+while his wife's voice was so charming that the party became almost
+dependent on it.  They could scarcely have gone to rest at last without
+Nellie's hymn or song as a lullaby!  We must state, however, that Tomlin
+did not share in this pleasure.  That poor man had been born musically
+deaf, as some people are born physically blind.  There was no musical
+inlet to his soul!  There was, indeed, a door for sound to enter, and
+music, of course, sought an entrance by that door; but it was
+effectually destroyed, somehow, in passing through the doorway, so that
+poor Tomlin showed no symptom of pleasure.  What he heard, and how he
+heard it, is known only to himself!
+
+Once or twice during this time they visited the cavern of the wreck,
+with the view, if possible, of recovering something from the sunk
+vessel, but though most of the men could swim, none of them could dive,
+therefore the result was failure.
+
+They succeeded, however, in making soap by boiling wood-ash and seal's
+fat in their cast-iron pot.  Those who are accustomed to the celebrated
+"Pears" can scarcely understand what an addition to cleanliness and
+comfort resulted from this coarsely manufactured article.
+
+Gulls' eggs were found in great quantity on the cliffs, and the
+discovery and capture of wild pigs added to the luxury of their table--
+which latter, by the way, was an ingenious contrivance of Joe Slag.
+Binding four sticks together in the form of a stout oblong frame, Joe
+had covered this--filled it in as it were--with straight branches about
+a finger thick, laid side by side and tied to the frame.  This he fixed
+on four posts driven into the ground, and thus formed an excellent, if
+not an elegant, table.
+
+One morning at breakfast, Terrence O'Connor was observed to be unusually
+busy with a large hook.
+
+"Are you goin' to fish for sharks to-day?" asked Slag.
+
+"Faix, no; it's to the woods I'll go fishin' to-day, Joe.  Now, Nell,
+gi' me the stoutest line ye've got on hand, mavourneen."
+
+"Will that do?  I made it the other day specially for sharks--or
+whales!" said Nellie, with a light laugh, for she expected him to reject
+the line she held up.
+
+"The very thing, Nell.  Hand it over.  Now, boys, I'm off to try my luck
+i' the woods, for I'm gittin' tired o' the say."
+
+O'Connor went off alone, bestowing a mysterious wink on Peggy Mitford as
+he left.
+
+The Irishman had observed that the wild pigs were particularly fond of a
+certain root which was plentiful in a valley about three miles distant
+from the hut.  Repairing to that valley, he dug up one of the roots,
+baited his hook with it, hung it from a low branch to attract attention,
+fastened the other end of the line to a tree, and went off to hide and
+bide his time.  Before half-an-hour had elapsed, a gay young pig visited
+the scene of its former festivities, saw the pendent bait, smelt it,
+took it in its mouth, and straightway filled the woods with frantic
+lamentations.  The struggle between the Irishman and that pig was worthy
+of record, but we prefer leaving it to the reader's imagination.  The
+upshot was, that the pig was overcome, carried--bound, and shrieking--to
+the hut, and tamed by Peggy.  In a short time, other pigs were caught
+and tamed.  So, also, were rabbits.  These bred and multiplied.  The
+original pig became the mother of a large family, and in a short time
+something like the sounds and aspects of a farm began to surround the
+old hut.  Still further--by means of the cast-iron pot, which already
+boiled their soup and their soap--they managed to boil sea-water down
+into salt, and with this some of the pigs were converted into salt
+pork--in short, the place began to assume the appearance of a busy and
+thriving backwoods settlement.
+
+"It's risin' tide with us again, after a fashion, Nell," said the
+coxswain to his wife, as they stood one evening on the sea-shore
+watching the sunset.
+
+Nellie sighed.  "It is, Bob," she said, "and I'm very thankful; but--but
+I'd rather be at home in Old England among kith and kin, even though the
+tide was low!"
+
+"What! alongside o' Aunt Betty?"
+
+"Yes, even alongside o' Aunt Betty; for if this voyage has taught me
+anything at all, it has taught me that, after all, `there's no place
+like home!'"
+
+"Right you are, Nell," said Joe Slag, who came up at that moment,
+"there's no place like home--when it's a happy one; but if it ain't a
+happy one, there may be difference of opinion even on that pint, d'ee
+see?"
+
+That very night, a great ocean steamer, bound from the Antipodes to Old
+England, chanced to diverge from her true course, and sighted the
+beacon-fire which Tomlin--on duty at the time--was stirring up to
+fervent heat.  The Captain was not one of those whom Terrence O'Connor
+credited with diabolic possession.  He was a good man; and, knowing that
+men did not light beacon-fires on lonely islands merely for amusement,
+he resolved to lay-to till daylight, which was due in about an hour from
+the time the island was sighted.  Meanwhile, he sounded his steam
+whistle.
+
+At the sound, the hut instantly disgorged its male inmates, who,
+recognising the familiar noise and the steamer's lights, sent up a shout
+of mingled joy and thanksgiving.
+
+"Get out the boat, boys!" cried Hayward, as he ran back to the hut to
+rouse the women.
+
+"Get ready, quick!  Eva; a steamer at last, thank God, in the offing!
+Don't lose a moment.  They may have little time to wait.  Boat will be
+ready in a few minutes."
+
+"Ay, an' pack up all you want to carry away," cried the coxswain,
+crossing the threshold at that moment.
+
+"So it is all going to end suddenly like a dream!" said Eva, as she
+hastened to obey orders.
+
+"Home, sweet home!" murmured Nellie, trembling with joy at the prospect.
+
+"Wherever you are, my dear, the home will be sweet," said Peggy.
+"Though of course it wouldn't be that without your 'usband, for it takes
+two to make a fight, you know, an' it takes two no less, I think, to
+make things pleasant, but--dear, dear, what a disagreeable thing it is
+to 'ave to dress in a 'urry, though one shouldn't--"
+
+"Look alive, there! look al-i-ve!" roared O'Connor, putting his head in
+at the door.  "Daylight's a-breakin', an' they won't--"
+
+"Oh!  Terrence, that reminds me--don't forget our pets," cried Nellie,
+who had steadily declined to speak of them as "live stock."
+
+"All right, missis.  It's lookin' after them I am this minnit."
+
+The Irishman ran, as he spoke, to the styes and hutches where the pigs
+and rabbits were kept and opened the doors.
+
+"Out wid ye!" he cried, "the Act of Emancipation's passed, and ye're all
+free--ivery mother's son of ye."
+
+Accustomed to his voice and his caressing hand, the astonished creatures
+seemed to look up at him in surprise.
+
+"Be aff, at wance, hooroo!" cried the excited man, with a clap of his
+hands and a Donnybrook yell that sent all the "pets" leaping and
+squealing into their native jungle.
+
+Soon after that the boat was bounding out to sea under the impulse of
+strong arms and willing hearts.  A few minutes more, and they were
+receiving the warm congratulations of the passengers and crew of the
+steamer.  Then the order was given to go ahead full speed, and the
+engine's great heart seemed to throb sympathetically within the hearts
+of the rescued ones as the vessel cut her way swiftly through the
+Southern Ocean--homeward bound for Old England!  Nevertheless, there was
+a touch of sadness in the breasts of all as they turned their farewell
+gaze on the receding island and thought of the pets, the old hut, the
+long period of mingled pleasure and suffering, and the lonely grave.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+We cannot part from the friends whose footsteps we have followed so long
+and so far without a parting word or two.
+
+On returning to his native village, Bob Massey found that his successor
+as coxswain had died, and that another man had not yet been appointed to
+the lifeboat--he was therefore installed, with much rejoicing, in his
+old position as a rescuer of human lives.  Joe Slag, naturally and
+pleasantly, also fell into his old post at the bow.  Nellie found that
+Aunt Betty had had what the villagers called "a stroke" during her
+absence; which crushing blow had the effect of opening her eyes to many
+things regarding herself and others, to which she had been particularly
+blind before.  It also had the effect--indirectly--of subduing much of
+the evil in her character and bringing out much of the good.  As evil
+begets evil, so good begets good; and one result of this law was, that
+the seven children, whom she had brought--or banged--up, became seven
+repentant and sympathetic and reasonably good creatures when they saw
+the old mother, whom they used to think so harsh and so physically
+strong, reduced to amiable helplessness.  Thus it came to pass that
+there was not in all the village an old woman who was so well looked
+after by her progeny as Aunt Betty.
+
+Terrence O'Connor continued to rove about the world in the capacity of a
+ship's cook till near the end of his days.  John Mitford and Peggy
+unexpectedly came into a small inheritance soon after returning home,
+and settled down for life close to the coxswain's cottage.  Tomlin went
+to New Zealand to seek his fortune.  Whether he found it or not, we
+cannot tell!  Last, but not least, Dr Hayward and his wife returned to
+their native land, and for many years afterwards kept up a steady
+correspondence with Nell Massey, in which, you may be sure, there were
+frequent and pleasant allusions to the time which they had spent
+together on the lonely isle in the southern seas.
+
+One morning, Nellie presented her husband with a baby boy.  Bob was out
+with the lifeboat rescuing a shipwrecked crew at the time the
+presentation was made.  On his return, he opened the door and stood
+before his wife dripping wet.
+
+"Fifteen saved this time, Nell," he began, but the nurse stopped him by
+exhibiting the baby boy.
+
+"Thank the Lord!" he said, with a glad look in his wet eyes.
+
+"You mustn't come near us," said the nurse, with a look of warning.
+"Only a look just now."
+
+"The tide has risen to the flood now, Bob," murmured the young mother,
+softly.
+
+"Ay," said the coxswain in a deep voice, "an' it's a high spring tide
+too.  God bless you, Nell!"
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+STORY TWO, CHAPTER 1.
+
+JACK FROST AND SONS--A SHORT STORY.
+
+One year in the last quarter of the present century John Frost, Esquire,
+of Arctic Hall, paid an unusually long visit to the British Islands.
+
+John, or Jack, Frost, as he was familiarly called by those who did not
+fear him, was a powerful fellow; an amazingly active, vigorous,
+self-willed fellow, whom it was difficult to resist, and, in some
+circumstances, quite impossible to overcome.
+
+Jack was a giant.  Indeed, it is not improbable that he was also a
+"giant-killer,"--an insolent, self-assertive, cold-hearted giant, who
+swaggered with equal freedom into the palaces of the rich and the
+cottages of the poor; but he did not by any means meet with the same
+reception everywhere.
+
+In palaces and mansions he was usually met in the entrance hall by a
+sturdy footman who kicked him out and slammed the door in his face,
+while in cottages and lowly dwellings he was so feebly opposed that he
+gained entrance easily--for he was a bullying shameless fellow, who
+forced his way wherever he could--and was induced to quit only after
+much remonstrance and persuasion, and even then, he usually left an
+unpleasant flavour of his visit behind him.
+
+But there were some abodes in which our hero met with no opposition at
+all, where the inmates scarcely made any attempt to keep him out, but
+remained still and trembled, or moaned feebly, while he walked in and
+sat down beside them.
+
+Jack was somewhat of a deceiver too.  He had, for the most part, a
+bright, beaming, jovial outward aspect, which made the bitter coldness
+of his heart all the more terrible by contrast.  He was most deadly in
+his feelings in calm weather, but there were occasions when he took
+pleasure in sallying forth accompanied by his like-minded sons, Colonel
+Wind and Major Snow.  And it was a tremendous sight, that few people
+cared to see except through windows, when those three, arm-in-arm, went
+swaggering through the land together.
+
+One Christmas morning, at the time we write of, Jack and his two sons
+went careering, in a happy-go-lucky sort of way, along the London
+streets towards the "west end," blinding people's eyes as they went,
+reversing umbrellas, overturning old women, causing young men to
+stagger, and treating hats in general as if they had been black
+footballs.  Turning into Saint James's Park they rushed at the royal
+palace, but, finding that edifice securely guarded from basement to
+roof-tree, they turned round, and, with fearless audacity, assaulted the
+Admiralty and the Horse-Guards--taking a shot at the clubs in passing.
+It need scarcely be recorded that they made no impression whatever on
+those centres of wealth and power.
+
+Undismayed--for Jack and his sons knew nothing either of fear or
+favour--they went careering westward until they came to a palatial
+mansion, at the half-open front door of which a pretty servant girl
+stood peeping out.  It was early.  Perhaps she was looking for the
+milkman--possibly for the policeman.  With that quick perception which
+characterises men of war, Major Snow saw and seized his opportunity.
+Dashing forward he sprang into the hall.  Colonel Wind, not a whit less
+prompt, burst the door wide open, and the three assailants tumbled over
+each other as they took possession of the outworks of the mansion.
+
+But "Jeames" was not far distant.  The screams of Mary drew him forth,
+he leaped into the hall, drove out the intruders, and shut the door with
+a crash, but with no further damage to the foe than the snipping off
+part of Major Snow's tails, which Mary swept up into a dust shovel and
+deposited in the coal-hole, or some such dark region below.
+
+Our trio possessed neither fear nor pride.  They were also destitute of
+taste, and had no respect for persons.  Treating their repulse as a good
+joke, they turned round and went hilariously along the Strand, embracing
+every one they met, young and old, rich and poor, pretty and plain, with
+pointed impartiality, until they reached the City.  There we will leave
+them to revel amongst the poor, while we return to the mansion at the
+west end.
+
+In two snug bedrooms thereof two young men lay in their comfortable
+beds, partially awake and yawning--the one flat on his back as if laid
+out for his last sleep; the other coiled into a bundle with the
+bedclothes, as if ready to be carried off to the laundry with the next
+washing.  The rooms were connected by a door which stood open, for the
+occupants were twin brothers; their united ages amounting to forty
+years.
+
+"Ned," said the straight one to the bundle.
+
+"Well, Tom," (sleepily).
+
+"Did you hear that noise--like a cannon-shot?"
+
+"Ya-i-o-u yes--som'ing tumbled--door bang'd," (snore).
+
+"Hallo, Ned!" cried Tom, suddenly leaping out of bed and beginning to
+dress in haste; "why, it's Christmas morning!  I had almost forgot.  A
+Merry Christmas to you, my boy!"
+
+"M'rry Kissm's, ol' man, but don' waken me.  What's use o' gettin' up?"
+
+"The use?" echoed Tom, proceeding rapidly with his toilet; "why, Ned,
+the use of rising early is that it enables a man to get through with his
+work in good time, and I've a deal of work to do to-day at the
+east-end."
+
+"So 'v' I," murmured Ned, "at th' wes' end."
+
+"Indeed.  What are you going to do?"
+
+"Sk-t."
+
+"Sk-t?  What's that?"
+
+"Skate--ol' man, let m' 'lone," growled Ned, as he uncoiled himself to
+some extent and re-arranged the bundle for another snooze.
+
+With a light laugh Tom Westlake left his brother to enjoy his repose,
+and descended to the breakfast-room, where his sister Matilda, better
+known as Matty, met him with a warm reception.
+
+Everything that met him in that breakfast-parlour was warm.  The fire,
+of course, was warm, and it seemed to leap and splutter with a
+distinctly Christmas morning air; the curtains and carpets and
+arm-chairs were warm and cosy in aspect; the tea-urn was warm, indeed it
+was hot, and so were the muffins, while the atmosphere itself was
+unusually warm.  The tiny thermometer on the chimney-piece told that it
+was 65 degrees of Fahrenheit.  Outside, the self-registering thermometer
+indicated 5 degrees below zero!
+
+"Why, Matty," exclaimed Tom, as he looked frowningly at the instrument,
+"I have not seen it so low as that for years.  It will freeze the Thames
+if it lasts long enough."
+
+Matty made no reply, but stood with her hands clasped on her brother's
+arm gazing contemplatively at the driving snow.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" asked Tom.
+
+"About the poor," answered Matty, as she went and seated herself at the
+breakfast-table.  "On such a terrible morning as this I feel so
+inexpressibly selfish in sitting down to an overflowing meal in the
+midst of such warmth and comfort, when I know that there are hundreds
+and thousands of men and women and children all round us who have
+neither fire nor food sufficient--little clothing, and no comfort.  It
+is dreadful," added Matty, as an unusually fierce gust dashed the snow
+against the windows.
+
+Tom was like-minded with his sister, but he could not suppress a smile
+as he looked into her pretty little anxious face.
+
+"Yes, Matty, it _is_ dreadful," he replied, "and the worst of it is that
+we can do so little, so very little, to mend matters.  Yet I don't feel
+as you do about the selfishness of enjoying a good breakfast in
+comfortable circumstances, for it is God who has given us all that we
+have, as well as the power to enjoy it.  I grant, that if we simply
+enjoyed our good things, and neither thought of nor cared for the poor,
+we should indeed be most abominably selfish, but happily that is not our
+case this morning.  Have we not risen an hour earlier than usual to go
+out and do what we can to mitigate the sorrows of the poor?  Are we not
+about to face the bitter blast and the driving snow on this Christmas
+morning for that very purpose? and should we not be rendered much less
+capable of doing so, if we were to start off on our mission with cold
+bodies and half-filled--I beg pardon, pass the muffins, dear.  Besides,
+sister mine, if you were to go out on such a morning cold and underfed,
+would it not be probable that I should have to go and fetch a doctor for
+you instead of taking you out to help me in aiding and comforting poor
+people?"
+
+"That may be all very true, Tom," returned Matty, with a dissatisfied
+and puzzled look, "but I cannot help feeling that I have so much, so
+_very_ much, more than I need of everything, while the thousands I speak
+of have so little--so very little.  Why could not rich people like us be
+content with plainer things, and use fewer things, and so have more to
+give to the poor?"
+
+"You have broached a very wide and profound subject, Matty, and it would
+probably take us a week to go into it exhaustively, but a few words may
+suffice to show you that your remedy would not meet the case.  Suppose
+that all the people in England were all at once smitten with your desire
+to retrench in order to have more to spare to the poor--and were to act
+upon their convictions; to determine that henceforth they would live on
+the plainest food, such as potatoes, mutton, and bread; what, I ask you,
+would become of the great army of confectioners?  Would they not be
+thrown out of employment, and help, perhaps, to swell the ranks of the
+poor?  If the rich ceased to buy pictures, what would become of
+painters?  If they gave up books, (horrible to think of!) what would be
+the consequences to authors, and what the result to themselves?  If
+carriages and horses were not kept, what would become of coachmen and
+grooms and ostlers--to say nothing of coach-makers, saddlers,
+harness-makers, and their innumerable dependants?  No--living plainly or
+simply is not what is wanted, but living reasonably--according to one's
+means.  Then, as to your having, as you say, much more than you need--
+that does not injure the poor, for nothing of it is wasted.  Does not
+part of the surplus go to Mary and James and the other servants, and
+much of what they do not consume goes in charity, directly, to the poor
+themselves?"
+
+"Well, but," returned Matty, with the distressed and puzzled look still
+unabated, "though all you tell me may be quite true, it does not in the
+least degree alter the fact that there _is_ something quite wrong in the
+condition of the poor of our great cities, which _ought_ to be
+remedied."
+
+"Of course it does not, little woman, but it relieves my mind, and it
+ought to relieve yours, as to the selfishness of enjoying a good
+breakfast."
+
+"But, surely," resumed Matty, with a slightly indignant look and tone,
+"surely you don't mean to tell me that there is no remedy for the
+miserable condition of the poor, and that the rich must just sigh over
+it, or shut their eyes to it, while they continue to revel in luxury?"
+
+"How you fly to extremes, sister!" said Tom, with a laugh, as he neatly
+cut the top off a fourth egg.  "I combat your erroneous views, and
+straightway you charge me, by implication, with having no views at all!
+A remedy there surely is, but the wisest among us are not agreed as to
+_what_ it is--chiefly, I think, because the remedy is not simple but
+extremely complex.  It cannot be stated in a few words.  It consists in
+the wise and prompt application of multiform means--"
+
+"Brother," interrupted Matty with a smile, "do you think I am to be
+turned from my quest after this great truth by the stringing together of
+words without meaning--at least words vague and incomprehensible?"
+
+"By no means, Matty.  I hope that nothing will ever turn you from your
+quest after the best method of helping the poor.  But my words are not
+meant to be vague.  By multiform means I would indicate legislation in
+numerous channels, and social effort in all its ramifications, besides
+the correction of many erroneous modes of thought--such, for instance,
+as the putting of the less before the greater--"
+
+"Tom," again interrupted Matty, "I think it is about time to go and put
+on my things."
+
+"Not so, sister dear," said Tom impressively; "I intend that you shall
+hear me out.  I think that you put the less before the greater when you
+talk of `giving' to the poor instead of `considering' the poor.  The
+greater, you know, includes the less.  Consideration includes judicious
+giving, and the teaching of Scripture is, not to give to, but to
+_consider_, the poor.  Now you may be off and get ready--as quickly as
+you can, too, for it would never do to keep the poor waiting breakfast!"
+
+With a light laugh and a vigorous step--the result of goodwill to
+mankind, good intentions, good feeding, and, generally, good
+circumstances--Matilda Westlake ran upstairs to her room at the top of
+the house to put on a charming little winter bonnet, a dear little cloak
+lined with thick fur, and everything else to match, while Tom busied
+himself in meditating on the particular passage of God's Word which he
+hoped, by the Spirit's influence, to bring home to the hearts of some of
+the poor that Christmas morning.
+
+Half an hour after these two had gone forth to do battle with John Frost
+and Sons, Edward Westlake sauntered into the breakfast-room, his right
+hand in his pocket and his left twirling the end of an exceedingly
+juvenile moustache.
+
+Turning his back to the fire he perused the morning paper and enjoyed
+himself thoroughly, while James re-arranged the table for another
+sumptuous meal.
+
+Ned was by no means a bad fellow.  On the contrary, his companions
+thought and called him a "jolly good fellow."  His father was a jolly,
+though a gouty old widower.  Perhaps it was owing to the fact that there
+was no mother in the household that Ned smoked a meerschaum in the
+breakfast-room while he read the paper.
+
+"Have my skates been sharpened?" he asked, looking over the top of the
+paper.
+
+James said that they had been sharpened, and were then lying ready on
+the hall table.
+
+Sauntering to the window Ned looked out, and, James having retired, he
+made a few remarks himself, which showed the direction of his thoughts.
+
+"Capital!  Ice will be splendid.  Snow won't matter.  Lots of men to
+sweep it.  Looks as if the wind would fall, and there's a little bit of
+blue sky.  Even if it doesn't clear, the pond is well sheltered.  I do
+like a sharp, stinging, frosty day.  Makes one's blood career so
+pleasantly!"
+
+With such agreeable thoughts and a splendid appetite Ned Westlake sat
+down to breakfast.  Thereafter he put on a thick overcoat, edged with
+sable, a thick pair of boots and softly lined gloves, and went out with
+the skates swinging on his arm.
+
+Jack Frost and his two sons were still holding high revelry outside.
+They met him with impartial violence, but Ned bent forward with a smile
+of good-humoured defiance, and went on his way unchecked.
+
+Not so a stout and short old female of the coster-monger class, who,
+after a series of wild gyrations that might have put a dancing dervish
+to shame, bore down on Ned after the manner of a fat teetotum, and
+finally launched herself into his arms.
+
+"Hallo old girl--steady," exclaimed Ned, holding her up with an effort.
+"You carry too much sail to venture abroad in such weather."
+
+"Which it were my only one!" gasped the old woman, holding out her
+umbrella that had been reversed and obviously shattered beyond repair.
+Then, looking up at Ned, "You'd better leave a-go of me, young man.
+What will the neighbours think of us?"
+
+Which remark she uttered sternly--all the more that she had securely
+hooked herself to the railings and could afford to cast off her friend.
+
+With a solemn assurance that he esteemed her, "the sweetest of the
+fair," Ned went smilingly on his way, receiving in reply, "La, now,
+who'd 'a' thought it!"
+
+Having twisted this lady's bonnet off, blown her unkempt hair straight
+out, and otherwise maltreated her, Colonel Wind, with his father and
+brother, went raging along the streets until he came to the
+neighbourhood of Whitechapel.  The three seemed rather fond of this
+region, and no wonder; for, although never welcomed, they found
+themselves strong enough to force an entrance into many a poor home, and
+to remain in possession.
+
+Swaggering, in their own noisy and violent manner, into several courts
+and blind alleys, they caught up all the lighter articles of rubbish
+that lay about, hurled them against the frail and cracked windows--some
+of which they broke, and others of which they could not break by reason
+of their having been broken already.  They did what was next best,
+however,--drove in the old hats and coats and other garments, with which
+the square holes had been inefficiently stopped.
+
+"Jolly! ain't it?" remarked a street boy, with a ruddy face and hair
+blown straight on end all round, to another street boy with a cast-iron
+look and a red nose--both being powerfully robust.
+
+"Prime!" asserted the knight of the red nose.
+
+And then both went eagerly to take liberties with a neighbouring pump,
+from the spout of which hung an icicle like a stalactite, the droppings
+from which, at an earlier period, had formed a considerable stalagmite
+on the stones below.
+
+It is probable that the sick old man on the poor bed in the small room
+close to the pump did not think the state of matters either "jolly" or
+"prime," for, besides being very old, he was very weak and thin and cold
+and hungry; in addition to which Jack Frost had seated himself on the
+rickety chair beside the empty grate, and seemed bent on remaining--the
+colonel having previously blown open the door and removed a garment
+which had sheltered the old man's head, thus permitting the major to
+sprinkle a miniature drift on his pillow.
+
+"I hardly like to leave you, gran'father, in such blustery weather,"
+said a little maiden of about ten years of age, with filthy garments and
+a dirty face, who, if she had been washed and dressed, would have been
+distinctly pretty, but who, in the circumstances, was rather plain.  As
+she spoke she re-adjusted the garment-screen and removed the snowdrift.
+
+"Don't say that, Martha," replied the old man in a thin weak voice--it
+had been strong and deep and resonant once, but Time and Want and
+Disease play sad havoc with strong men.
+
+"You _must_ go, darling," resumed the old man after a few seconds' pause
+to recover breath.  "You've no chance of a breakfast otherwise.  And--
+perhaps--they may give you a bit to bring home for--"
+
+Martha eagerly interrupted the hesitating voice,--and it was easily
+interrupted!  "Yes, yes, gran'father.  They'll be sure to let me bring
+home some for you.  I'll be quite, _quite_ sure to do it."
+
+She made the promise with great decision, as well she might, for she had
+made up her mind to pocket all the food that was given to her except
+just a small morsel, which she would nibble in order to make believe
+that she was feeding!
+
+"Lock the door and put the key in your pocket," said the old man, while
+the child tucked in about him the thin torn counterpane which formed the
+only covering to his straw bed.  "An' don't fear for me, darling.  The
+Lord is with me.  Be sure to eat as much as you can."
+
+Having regard to her secret intentions, Martha refrained from pledging
+herself, but she laughed and nodded significantly as she quitted the
+cold, dismal, and shabby room.
+
+It was little Martha's first experience of a "free breakfast."  She had,
+indeed, heard of such a thing before, but had not up to that time met
+with anything of the kind, so she advanced to "the hall" with some
+timidity and much expectation.
+
+The hall was very full, and, as poor little Martha was rather late, she
+could not manage to crush in much beyond the door.  Besides, being
+small, she could see nothing.  In these depressing circumstances her
+heart began to sink, when her attention was attracted by a slight stir
+outside the door.  A lady and gentleman were coming in.  It so happened
+that the lady in passing trod upon one of Martha's cold little toes, and
+drew from the child a sharp cry.
+
+"Oh, my dear, _dear_ little girl!" cried the shocked lady, with a gush
+of self-reproach and sympathy, "I'm _so_ sorry--so _very, very_ sorry.
+It was so stupid of me!  Have I hurt you much, _dear_ little girl?
+Come--come with me."
+
+"Bring her to the stove, Matty, there's more room there to have it
+looked to," said the gentleman, in a kind voice.
+
+Much consoled by all this, though still whimpering, little Martha
+suffered herself to be led to the front seats, and set on a bench just
+below the platform, where she began to bloom under the genial influence
+of the stove, and to wonder, with inexpressible surprise, at the mighty
+sea of upturned faces in front of her.  As for the toe, it was utterly
+forgotten.  The lady's foot, you see, being almost as light as her
+heart, had done it no serious injury.  Nevertheless, she continued for a
+few minutes to inspect it earnestly and inquire for it tenderly,
+regardless of dirt!
+
+"You're _sure_ it is better, dear little child?"
+
+"Oh yes, ma'am, thank you.  I don't feel it at all now.  An' it's _so_
+nice to feel warm again!"
+
+What a depth of meaning was unwittingly given to the last two words by
+the emphasis of the child-voice.--"Warm"--"Again!"  The lady almost
+burst into tears as she thought of all that they implied.  But her
+services were required at the harmonium.  With a parting pat on Martha's
+curly head, and a bright smile, she hurried away to ascend the platform.
+
+The preliminaries of a feast at which most of the feasters are cold and
+hungry--some of them starving--should not be long.  Full well did Tom
+Westlake know and appreciate this truth, and, being the donor,
+originator, and prime mover in the matter, he happily had it all his own
+way.
+
+In the fewest possible words, and in a good loud voice which produced
+sudden silence, he asked God to give His blessing with the food
+provided, and to send His Holy Spirit into the hearts of all present, so
+that they might be made to hunger and thirst for Jesus, the Bread and
+Water of Life.  Then the poor people had scarcely recovered from their
+surprise at the brevity of the prayer, when they were again charmed to
+silence by the sweet strains of the harmonium.  You see, they had not
+yet become _blase_ and incapable of enjoying anything short of an organ.
+Indeed, there were some among them who deliberately said they preferred
+a harmonium to an organ!
+
+But no instrument either of ancient or modern invention could drown the
+clatter that ensued when enormous mugs of earthenware were distributed
+to the company, by more or less rich and well-off "workers"; so the
+clatter and the hymns went on together until each lung was filled with
+some delectable fluid, smoking hot, and each mouth crammed with
+excellent bread and meat.  Then comparative quiet ensued, during which
+temporary calm Tom read a few verses of the Word of God, commenting on
+them briefly in language so forcible that it went right home to many
+hearts, yet so simple that even little Martha understood it.
+
+True to her intention, little Martha, although much surprised and
+charmed and perplexed by all that was going on around her, did not
+forget to pocket something for gran'father.  She was met, however, by an
+exasperating difficulty at the very outset.  Her pocket was not large
+enough to contain the huge roll which, with some meat, had been put
+hastily into her small hand by a lady with a red rose in her bonnet.  To
+achieve her object with the roll and meat in one hand and the mug in the
+other was, she found, impossible, so she set the mug on the floor
+between her feet and proceeded to wrestle with the loaf and pocket,
+having previously torn off a very small portion of the bread for her own
+use.  Still the loaf was too large; so she tore off another morsel, and
+finally, after a severe struggle, succeeded in getting it and the bit of
+meat in.
+
+"You'll go for to kick it over, if you don't mind," said a small boy
+near her, referring to the mug.
+
+"You mind your own business--Imperence!" replied Martha, sharply.  It
+must be remembered that she was a child of the "slums."
+
+"Wot a cheeky little shrimp it is," retorted the boy, with as much of a
+grin as a stuffed mouth would admit of.
+
+Just then Matilda Westlake, having finished a hymn, and being mindful of
+the little toe, came quietly down to where Martha was sitting.
+
+"Why, dear child," she said, in surprise, "have they not given you
+something to eat?"
+
+"Oh yes, ma'am.  But I've--"
+
+She was going to say, "I've eaten it," but gran'father had so earnestly
+impressed on her mind the sinfulness of telling lies, that she felt
+constrained to hesitate, and, with a trembling lip, finished by saying
+she had eaten _some_ of it.
+
+"And what has become of the rest, dear?"
+
+"Please, miss, she've putt it in 'er pocket," said "Imperence" promptly.
+
+Without noticing the remark, Matty moved so as to make herself an
+effectual screen between Imperence and Martha.
+
+"Tell me, dear child," she said, stooping low and putting a gentle hand
+on Martha's shoulder, "are you not hungry?"
+
+"Oh yes," answered the little one quickly; "I'm so 'ungry.  You can't
+think 'ow 'ungry; but I promised to--to--"
+
+At this point her lip quivered, and she began to cry quietly.
+
+"Stay, don't tell me anything more about it, dear, till you have
+breakfasted.  Here, eat _this_ before you say another word."
+
+She took a roll from the basket of a passing "worker" and put it in the
+child's hand.  Nothing loth, Martha began to eat and drink, mingling a
+warm tear or two with the hot soup, and venting a sob now and then as
+she proceeded.
+
+Watching her for a few moments, Matty left her.
+
+In passing she stopped and said to Imperence, in a whisper of terrible
+intensity, "If you speak to that girl again you shall have--_no more_."
+
+No more!  To be "hanged by the neck till you are dead" would not have
+sounded so appalling just at that time.  So Imperence collapsed.
+
+It is not our purpose to go much further into the details of the feast.
+Suffice it to say that the poorest of the poor were there; that they
+were encouraged to eat as much as possible, and allowed to carry away
+what they could not eat, and there is reason to believe that, judging
+from the prominence of pockets, a considerable quantity found its way to
+hungry mouths which had been found incapable of attending the feast.
+
+Among those who did great execution in the pocketing line was, as you
+may well believe, little Martha.  Finding, to her ineffable joy, that
+there was no limit assigned to consumption, and that pocketing was not
+esteemed a sin, she proceeded, after stuffing herself, to stuff to
+overflowing the pocket with which she had previously wrestled, as
+already described, and then attempted to fill the pocket on the other
+side.  She did so in utter and child-like forgetfulness of the fact that
+she had recently lost several small articles in consequence of the
+condition of that pocket, and her memory was not awakened until, having
+just completed the satisfactory filling of it, she beheld, or rather
+felt, the entire mass of edibles descending to the floor, proving that
+the pocket was indeed a very bottomless pit.
+
+"Never mind, little one," said Tom Westlake, coming forward at the
+moment, for he had just closed the meeting; "I'll find a bag for you to
+put it in.  I hope the toe is all right."
+
+"Oh yes, sir, thank you, it's quite well," answered Martha, blushing
+through the dirt on her face, as she eyed the fallen food anxiously.
+
+"Tell me now, little one," continued Tom, sitting down on the bench and
+drawing the child gently towards him, "whom are you pocketing all these
+good things for?--not for yourself, I'm quite sure of that."
+
+"Oh dear, no, sir; it's for gran'father."
+
+"Indeed.  Is grandfather very poor?"
+
+"Oh yes, sir, very, _very_ poor; an' he's got nobody but me to take care
+of him."
+
+"If that be so, who is taking care of him just now?" asked Matty, who
+had joined her brother, leaving another "worker" at the harmonium to
+play the people out,--a difficult thing to do, by the way, for the
+people seemed very unwilling to go.
+
+You see, among other things, Jack Frost and Sons could gain no footing
+in that hall, and the people knew only too well that the firm was in
+great force awaiting them outside.
+
+"Nobody's takin' care on 'im, ma'am," replied Martha, somewhat shyly.
+"I locked 'im in, an' he's takin' care of hisself."
+
+"Would you like to give grandfather anything in particular, little
+woman, if a fairy were to offer to give it you?"
+
+"Oh, wouldn't I just?"
+
+"Yes?  What would you ask for?"
+
+Martha pursed her little mouth and knitted her brows in thought for a
+minute.  Then she said slowly, "I'd ask for a mug of hot soup, an' a
+blanket, an' some coals, and--oh!  I forgot, a teapot, for ours is
+cracked an' won't 'old in now."
+
+"Do you live far from this hall?" asked Tom.
+
+"No, sir, quite close."
+
+"Come, Matty, you and I will go with this little one and see
+grandfather.  What is your name, child?"
+
+"Martha Burns, sir."
+
+"Well, Martha, give me your hand, and come along."
+
+They were soon in the shabby little room,--for Martha was eager to give
+the food to the old man.  Of course Jack Frost and Sons were still in
+possession, but there had come another visitor during the child's
+absence, whom they were scarce prepared to meet.
+
+Death sat beside the lowly bed.  He had not yet laid his hand on his
+victim, but his chill presence was evidently felt.
+
+"Darling, I'm glad you've come," said the old man, faintly.  "I've been
+longing so for you.  Give me your hand, dear.  I'm so cold--so cold."
+
+He shivered as he spoke until the miserable bed shook.  Poor Martha
+forgot the food in her anxiety, for a striking change had come over
+gran'father--such as she had never seen before.  She took his thin hand
+in hers, and began to weep softly.
+
+But Matilda Westlake did not forget the food.  She took up the tin can
+in which it had been brought there, and poured some of the still warm
+contents into a cracked soup plate that stood on the table.  Finding a
+pewter spoon, she at once put her hand under the pillow, and raising the
+old man's head gently, began to feed him like a child.  Meanwhile Tom
+Westlake took off his thick overcoat and spread it over the bed.  Then
+he went out, bought some sticks and coal from a neighbour, and,
+returning, soon kindled a fire in the rusty grate.
+
+The old man did not seem surprised.  His face wore a dazed, yet
+thoroughly pleased, look as he quietly accepted these attentions.  All
+the time he kept fast hold of Martha's hand, and smiled to her once or
+twice.  It was evident that he relished the soup.  Only once he broke
+silence to thank them and say, "Jesus sent you, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, Jesus sent us," replied Matty, thoroughly meaning what she said.
+
+At that moment Death raised his hand and laid it gently on the old man's
+brow.  The hoary head bowed to the summons, and, with a soft sigh, the
+glad spirit fled to that region where suffering cannot enter.
+
+Oh, it was sad to witness the child-grief when Martha at last came to
+understand that gran'father was really gone.  And it required no little
+persuasion to induce her to leave the lowly sordid room that she had
+known as "home."
+
+While his sister comforted the child, Tom went to the "authorities" to
+inform them that an old pauper had gone the way of all flesh.
+
+When at last Martha permitted her new friends to remove her, she was led
+by Miss Westlake to the not far distant house of a lady friend, whose
+sympathies with the suffering, the sorrowful, and the fallen were so
+keen that she had given up all and gone to dwell in the midst of them,
+in the sanguine hope of rescuing some.  To this lady's care Martha was
+in the meantime committed, and then Tom and his sister went their way.
+
+Their way led them to a very different scene not far from the same
+region.
+
+"We're rather late," remarked Tom, consulting his watch as they turned
+into a narrow street.
+
+"Not too late, I think," said his sister.
+
+"I hope not, for I should be sorry to go in upon them at dinner-time."
+
+They were not too late.  David Butts, whom they were about to visit, was
+a dock-labourer.  In early youth he had been a footman, in which
+capacity he had made the acquaintance of the Westlakes' nursery-maid,
+and, having captivated her heart, had carried her off in triumph and
+married her.
+
+David had not been quite as steady as might have been desired.  He had
+acquired, while in service, a liking for beer, which had degenerated
+into a decided craving for brandy, so that he naturally came down in the
+world, until, having lost one situation after another, he finally, with
+his poor wife and numerous children, was reduced to a state bordering on
+beggary.  But God, who never forgets His fallen creatures, came to this
+man's help when the tide with him was at its lowest ebb.  A
+humble-minded city missionary was sent to him.  He was the means of
+bringing him to Jesus.  The Saviour, using one of the man's companions
+as an instrument, brought him to a temperance meeting, and there an
+eloquent, though uneducated, speaker flung out a rope to the struggling
+man in the shape of a blue ribbon.  David Butts seized it, and held on
+for life.  His wife gladly sewed a bit of it on every garment he
+possessed--including his night-shirt--and the result was that he got to
+be known at the docks as a steady, dependable man, and found pretty
+constant employment.
+
+How far Matilda Westlake was instrumental in this work of rescue we need
+not stop to tell.  It is enough to say that she had a hand in it--for
+her heart yearned towards the nurse, who had been very kind to her when
+she was a little child.
+
+Jack Frost and his sons, with their usual presumption, were in close
+attendance on the Westlakes when they knocked at David's door, and when
+it was opened they rudely brushed past the visitors and sought to enter,
+but a gush of genial heat from a roaring fire effectually stopped Jack
+and the major on the threshold, and almost killed them.  Colonel Wind,
+however, succeeded in bursting in, overturning a few light articles,
+causing the flames to sway, leap, and roar wildly, and scattering ashes
+all over the room, but his triumph was short-lived.  The instant the
+visitors entered he was locked out, and the door shut against him with a
+bang.
+
+"It do come rather awkward, sir, 'avin' no entrance 'all," said David,
+as he made the door fast.  "If we even 'ad a porch it would 'elp to keep
+the wind and snow hout, but I ain't complainin', sir.  I've on'y too
+good reason to be thankful."
+
+"Dear Miss Matilda," said the old nurse, dusting a wooden chair with her
+apron, and beaming all over with joy, "it's good for sore eyes to see
+you.  Don't mind the child'n, miss, an' do sit down near the fire.  I'm
+sure your feet must be wet--such dreadful weather."
+
+"No, indeed, nurse,--thank you," said Miss Westlake, laughing as she sat
+down, "my feet are not a bit wet.  The frost is so hard that everything
+is quite dry."
+
+"Now it's no use to tell me that, Miss Matty," said Mrs Butts, with the
+memory of nursing days strong upon her.  "You was always such a dear,
+thoughtless child!  Don't you remember that day when you waded in baby's
+bath, an' then said you wasn't wet a bit, only a _very_ little, an' you
+rather liked it?  Indeed she did: you needn't laugh, Master Tom, I
+remember it as well as if it happened yesterday."
+
+"I don't in the least doubt you, Mrs Butts," said Tom, "I was only
+laughing at my sister's idea of dryness.  But you must not let us
+interrupt you in your cooking operations, else we will go away directly.
+Just go about it as if we were not here, for I have some business
+matters to talk over with your husband."
+
+"Go away?" echoed Mrs Butts; "you must not talk of going away till
+you've had a bite of lunch with us.  It's our dinner, you know, but
+lawks! what do it matter what you calls it so long as you've got it to
+eat?  An' there's such a splendid apple dumplin' in the pot, miss; you
+see, it's Tommy's birthday, for he was born on a Christmas Day, an' he's
+very fond of apple dumplin', is Tommy."
+
+The six children, of various ages and sizes scattered about the small
+room, betrayed lively interest in this invitation--some hoping that it
+would be accepted; others as evidently hoping that it would be declined.
+As for Tommy, his fear that the dumpling would be too small for the
+occasion, filled his heart with anxiety that showed itself strongly in
+his face, but he was promptly relieved by Miss Matty assuring his mother
+that to stay was impossible, as they had other visits to pay that day.
+
+Thus the lady and nurse chatted of past and present days, while Tom
+Westlake talked "business" with the dock-labourer.
+
+"You seem to be getting on pretty comfortably now," remarked Tom.
+
+"Yes, sir, thank God I am.  Ever since I was enabled to cry, `God be
+merciful to me a sinner,' things 'as gone well with me.  An' the puttin'
+on o' the blue ribbon, sir, 'as done me a power o' good.  You see,
+before that I was sorely tempted by comrades offerin' me a glass, and by
+my own wish to _'ave_ a glass, but when I mounted the blue I was let
+alone, though they chaffed me now an' then, an' I felt it was no use
+thinkin' about it, 'owever much I might wish for it.  The missus, bless
+'er 'art, sewed a bit o' blue on my night-shirt in fun, but d'ee know,
+sir, I do believe it's that 'as cured me o' dreamin' about it, as I used
+to do."
+
+"I'm glad to hear that, Butts," said Tom, with a laugh.  "Now, tell me;
+how long is it since you tasted strong drink?"
+
+"Six months this very day, sir."
+
+"And are you satisfied that you are better without it?"
+
+"Better without it, sir," repeated Butts, with energy, "in course I am--
+better in body and better in soul, also in pocket.  Of course you know,
+sir, we don't carry on every day with such fires an' dinners as we're
+a-goin' in for to-day--for Christmas on'y comes once a year, and
+sometimes we've been slack at the docks, an' once or twice I've bin laid
+up, so that we've bin pinched a bit now an' then, but we've bin able to
+make the two ends meet, and the older child'n is beginnin' to turn in a
+penny now an' again, so, you see, sir, though the fires ain't always
+bright, an Jack Frost do manage to git in through the key 'ole rather
+often just now, on the whole we're pretty comfortable."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it, Butts; very glad to hear it indeed," said Tom,
+"because I'm anxious to help you, and I make it a point only to help
+those who help themselves.  Six months of steadiness goes a long way to
+prove that your craving for drink has been cured, and that your
+reformation is genuine; therefore, I am able now to offer you a
+situation as porter in a bank, which for some time I have kept open on
+purpose to be ready for you.  How will that suit you--eh?"
+
+Whatever David Butts replied, or meant to reply, could only be gathered
+from his gratified expression, for at that moment his voice was drowned
+by a shriek of delight from the youngest children, in consequence of
+Mrs Butts, at Matilda's request, having removed the lid of the pot
+which held the dumpling, and let out a deliciously-scented cloud of
+steam.  It was almost too much for the little ones, whose mouths watered
+with anticipation, and who felt half inclined to lay violent hands on
+the pot and begin dinner without delay.
+
+"Now, I know by the smell that it is quite ready, so we will say
+good-bye at once," said Matilda, getting up with a smile, and drawing
+her warm cloak round her.  "Be sure to send your eldest girl to me
+to-morrow along with your husband."
+
+"And come early, Butts," said Tom Westlake, buttoning up his coat.
+
+"You may depend on me, sir."
+
+"Stand by to shut the door quickly after us," added Tom as he grasped
+the handle, "else the wind will get in and blow the fire about."
+
+The brother and sister, being young and active, were pretty smart in
+making their exit, and David Butts, being used to doors, was not slow to
+shut his own, but they could not altogether baffle the colonel, for he
+was waiting outside.  Indeed, he had been whistling with furious
+insolence through the keyhole all the time of the visit.  Sliding in
+edgewise, at the moment of opening, he managed to scatter the ashes
+again, and whirl about some of the light articles before he was fairly
+expelled.
+
+Thereafter, along with his father and brother, he went riotously after
+Tom and Matilda Westlake, sometimes shrieking over their heads; now and
+then dashing on in front, and, whirling round in an eddy, plunging
+straight back into their faces, but they could make nothing of it.  The
+brother and sister merely laughed at them, and defied them to do their
+worst, even, in the joy of their hearts, going the length of saying to
+several utter but beaming strangers, that it was "splendid Christmas
+weather."  And so it was,--to the young and strong.  Not so, alas! to
+the old and feeble.
+
+It almost seemed as if Colonel Wind and Major Snow had taken offence at
+this last sally, for about that time of the day they forsook their
+father and left London--probably to visit the country.  At all events,
+the clouds cleared away, the sky became blue, and the sun shone out
+gloriously--though without perceptibly diminishing the frost.
+
+After spending another hour or two in paying visits, during which they
+passed abruptly, more than once, from poverty-stricken scenes of
+moderate mirth to abodes of sickness and desolation, Tom and Matilda, by
+means of 'bus and cab, at last found themselves in the neighbourhood of
+the Serpentine.
+
+"What say you to a turn on the ice, Matty?"
+
+"Charming," cried Matty.
+
+Society on the Serpentine, when frozen over, is not very select, but the
+brother and sister were not particular on that point just then.  They
+hired skates; they skimmed about over the well-swept surface; they
+tripped over innumerable bits of stick or stone or orange-peel; they ran
+into, or were run into by, various beings whose wrong-headedness induced
+a preference for skating backwards.  In short, they conducted themselves
+as people usually do on skates, and returned home pretty well exhausted
+and blooming.
+
+That evening, after a family dinner, at which a number of young cousins
+and other relatives were present, Tom and his sister left the festive
+circle round the fire, and retired to a glass conservatory opening out
+of the drawing-room.  There was a sofa in it and there they found Ned
+Westlake extended at full length.  He rose at once and made room for
+them.
+
+"Well, Ned, how have you enjoyed yourself to-day?" asked Tom.
+
+"Oh, splendidly!  There was such a jolly party in Wharton's grounds--
+most of them able to skate splendidly.  The pond is so sheltered that
+the wind scarcely affected us, and a staff of sweepers cleared away the
+snow as fast as it fell.  Afterwards, when it cleared up and the sun
+shone through the trees, it was absolutely magnificent.  It's the
+jolliest day I've had on the ice for years, though I'm almost knocked up
+by it.  Jovially fatigued, in fact.  But where have you been?"
+
+"We also have been skating," said Matilda.
+
+"Indeed!  I thought you had intended to spend the day somewhere in the
+east-end attending some of those free breakfasts, and visiting the poor,
+or something of that sort--as if there were not enough of city
+missionaries, and sisters of mercy, or charity, or whatever you call
+them, to look after such things."
+
+"You are right, Ned," said Tom, "such was our intention, and we carried
+it out too.  It was only at the end of the day that we took to skating
+on the Serpentine, and, considering the number of people we have run
+into, or overturned, or tumbled over, we found a couple of hours of it
+quite sufficient."
+
+From this point Tom Westlake "harked back" and related his experiences
+of the day.  He possessed considerable power of graphic delineation, and
+gradually aroused the interest of his gay and volatile but
+kindly-disposed brother.
+
+"Ned," said he, at last, "do you really believe in the truth of these
+words, `Blessed are they that consider the poor?'"
+
+"Yes, Tom, I do," replied Ned, becoming suddenly serious.
+
+What Tom said to his brother after that we will not relate, but the
+result was that, before that Christmas evening closed, he succeeded in
+convincing Ned that a day of "jolly good fun" may be rendered
+inexpressibly more "jolly," by being commenced with an effort to cheer
+and lighten the lot of those into whose sad lives there enter but a
+small amount of jollity and far too little fun.
+
+
+
+STORY THREE, CHAPTER 1.
+
+A DOUBLE RESCUE--INTRODUCTION.
+
+It is a curious and interesting fact that Christmas-tide seemed to have
+a peculiar influence on the prospects of our hero Jack Matterby, all
+through his life.  All the chief events of his career, somehow, happened
+on or about Christmas Day.
+
+Jack was born, to begin with, on a Christmas morning.  His father, who
+was a farmer in the middle ranks of life, rejoiced in the fact,
+esteeming it full of promise for the future.  So did his mother.  Jack
+himself did not at first seem to have any particular feeling on the
+subject.  If one might judge his opinions by his conduct, it seemed that
+he was rather displeased than otherwise at having been born; for he
+spent all the first part of his natal day in squalling and making faces,
+as though he did not like the world at all, and would rather not have
+come into it.
+
+"John, dear," said his mother to his father, one day not long after his
+birth, "I'm so glad he is a boy.  He might have been a girl, you know."
+
+"No, Molly; _he_ could never have been a girl!" replied the husband, as
+he gently patted his wife's shoulder.
+
+"Now, don't laugh at me, John, dear.  You know what I mean.  But what
+shall we call him?"
+
+"John, of course," replied the farmer, with decision.  "My father was
+called John, and _his_ father was called John, and also his grandfather,
+and so on back, I have no doubt, to the very beginning of time."
+
+"Nay, John," returned his wife, simply, "that could hardly be; for
+however many of your ancestors may have been Johns, the first, you know,
+was Adam."
+
+"Why, Molly, you're getting to be quite sharp," returned the farmer.
+"Nevertheless this little man is to be John, like the rest of us."
+
+Mrs Matterby, being meek, gave in; but she did so with a sigh, for she
+wished the little one to be named Joseph, after her own deceased father.
+
+Thus it came to pass that the child was named John.  The name was
+expanded to Johnny during the first period of childhood.  Afterwards it
+was contracted to Jack, and did not attain to the simple grandeur of
+John till the owner of it became a man.
+
+In the Johnny period of life our hero confined his attention almost
+exclusively to smashing and overturning.  To overturn and to destroy
+were his chief amusements.  He made war on crockery to such an extent
+that tea-cups and saucers were usually scarce in the family.  He
+assaulted looking-glasses so constantly, that there was, ere long,
+barely enough of mirror left for his father to shave in.  As to which
+fact the farmer used to say, "Never mind, Molly.  Don't look so
+down-hearted, lass.  If he only leaves a bit enough to see a corner of
+my chin and the half of my razor, that will do well enough."  No window
+in the family mansion was thoroughly whole, and the appearance of a fat
+little fist, on the wrong side of a pane of glass, was quite a familiar
+object in the nursery.
+
+As for toys--Johnny had none, so to speak.  He had only a large basket
+full of bits, the misapplication of which to each other gave him many
+hours of profound recreation.  Everything that would turn inside out was
+so turned.  Whatever was by nature straight he bent, whatever bent he
+straightened.  Round things he made square when possible, and square
+things round; soft things hard, and hard things soft.  In short, nothing
+was too hard for Johnny.  Everything that came into his clutches, was
+subjected to what we may style the influence of experimental philosophy;
+and if Farmer Matterby had been a poor man he must soon have been
+ruined, but, being what is styled "well-to-do," he only said, in
+reference to these things--
+
+"Go ahead, my boy.  Make hay while the sun shines.  If you carry on as
+you've begun, you'll make your mark _somewhere_ in this world."
+
+"Alas!" remarked poor Mrs Matterby, "he has made his mark already
+_everywhere_, and that a little too freely!"
+
+Nevertheless she was proud of her boy, and sought to subdue his spirit
+by teaching him lessons of self-denial and love out of the Word of God.
+Johnny listened intently to these lessons, gazing with large wondering
+eyes, though he understood little of the teaching at first.  It was not
+all lost on him, however; and he thoroughly understood and reciprocated
+the deep love that beamed in his mother's eyes.
+
+Soon after Johnny had slid into the Jack period of life he became
+acquainted with a fisher-boy of his own age, whose parents dwelt in a
+cottage on the sea-shore, not a quarter of a mile from his own home, and
+close to the village of Blackby.
+
+Natty Grove was as fine a little fellow as one could wish to see: fair,
+curly-headed, blue-eyed, rough-jacketed, and almost swallowed up in a
+pair of his father's sea-boots, which had been cut down in the legs to
+fit him.  As to the feet!--well, as his father Ned Grove remarked, there
+was plenty of room for growth.  Natty had no mother, but he had a little
+sister about three years of age, and a grandmother, who might have been
+about thirty times three.  No one could tell her age for certain; but
+she was so old and wrinkled and dried up and withered and small, that
+she might certainly have claimed to be "the oldest inhabitant."  She had
+been bed-ridden for many years because of what her son called
+rum-matticks and her grandson styled rum-ticks.
+
+The name of Natty's little sister was Nellie; that of his grandmother,
+Nell--old Nell, as people affectionately called her.
+
+Now it may perhaps surprise the reader to be told that Jack Matterby, at
+the age of nine years, was deeply in love.  He had, indeed, been in that
+condition, more or less from the age of three, but the passion became
+more decided at nine.  He was in love with Nell--not blue-eyed little
+Nellie, but with wrinkled old Nell; for that antiquated creature was
+brimming over with love to mankind, specially to children.  On our hero
+she poured out such wealth of affection that he was powerfully attracted
+to her even in the period of Johnny-hood, and, as we have said, she
+captured him entirely when he reached Jack-hood.
+
+Old Nell was a splendid story-teller.  That was one of the baits with
+which she was fond of hooking young people.  It was interesting to sit
+in the fisherman's poor cottage and watch the little ones sitting
+open-mouthed and eyed, gazing at the withered little face, in which
+loving-kindness, mingling with fun, beamed from the old eyes, played
+among the wrinkles, smiled on the lips, and asserted itself in the
+gentle tones.
+
+"Jack," said Mrs Matterby, on the Christmas morning which ushered in
+her boy's ninth birthday, "come, I'm going to give you a treat to-day."
+
+"You always do, mammy, on my birthdays," said Jack.
+
+"I want you to go with a message to a poor woman," continued the mother.
+
+"Is that all?" exclaimed Jack, with a disappointed look.
+
+"Yes, that's all--or nearly all," replied his mother, with a twinkle in
+her eye, however, which kept her son from open rebellion.  "I want you
+to carry this basket of good things, with my best love and Christmas
+good-wishes, to old Nell Grove."
+
+"Oho!" exclaimed Jack, brightening up at once, "I'm your man; here, give
+me the basket.  But, mother," he added with a sudden look of perplexity,
+"you called old Nell a _poor_ woman, and I've heard her sometimes say
+that she has _everything_ that she needs and _more_ than she deserves!
+She can't be poor if that's true, and it _must_ be true; for you know
+that old Nell never, _never_ tells lies."
+
+"True, Jack; old Nell is not poor in one sense: she is rich in faith.
+She has got `contentment with godliness,' and many rich people have not
+got that.  Nevertheless she has none too much of the necessaries of this
+life, and none at all of the luxuries, so that she is what people
+usually call poor."
+
+"That's a puzzler, mammy--poor and rich both!"
+
+"I daresay it is a puzzler," replied Mrs Matterby, with a laugh, "but
+be off with your basket and message, my son; some day you shall
+understand it better."
+
+Pondering deeply on this "puzzler," the boy went off on his mission,
+trudging through the deep snow which whitened the earth and brightened
+that Christmas morning.
+
+"She's as merry as a cricket to-day," said Natty Grove, who opened the
+cottage door when his friend knocked.
+
+"Yes, as 'erry as a kiket," echoed flaxen-haired Nellie, who stood
+beside him.
+
+"She's always 'erry," said Jack, giving the little girl a gentle pull of
+the nose by way of expressing good will.  "A merry Christmas both!  How
+are you?  See here, what mother has sent to old Nell."
+
+He opened the lid of the basket.  Nattie and Nellie peeped in and
+snuffed.
+
+"Oh!  I _say_!" said the fisher-boy.  He could say no more, for the
+sight and scent of apples, jelly, roast fowl, home-made pastry, and
+other things was almost too much for him.
+
+"I expected it, dearie," said old Nell, extending her withered hand to
+the boy as he set the basket on the table.  "Every Christmas morning,
+for years gone by, she has sent me the same, though I don't deserve it,
+and I've no claim on her but helplessness.  But it's the first time she
+has sent it by you, Jack.  Come, I'll tell ye a story."
+
+Jack was already open-eyed with expectancy and he was soon open-mouthed,
+forgetful of past and future, absorbed entirely in the present.  Natty
+and Nelly were similarly affected and like-minded, while the little old
+woman swept them away to the wilds of Siberia, and told them of an
+escape from unjust banishment, of wanderings in the icy wilderness, and
+of starvation so dire that the fugitives were reduced to gnawing and
+sucking the leathern covers of their wallets for dear life.  Then she
+told of food sent at the last moment, almost by miracle, and of
+hair-breadth escapes, and final deliverance.  Somehow--the listeners
+could not have told how--old Nell inserted a reference to the real
+miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand, and she worked round to it
+so deftly, that it seemed an essential part of the story; and so indeed
+it was, for Nell intended the key-stone of the arch of her story to be
+the fact that, when man is reduced to the last extremity God steps in to
+save.
+
+It is certain that little Nellie did not understand the moral of the
+story, and it is uncertain how far the boys appreciated it; but it was
+old Nell's business to sow the seed beside all waters, and leave the
+rest to Him who gave the command.
+
+"Yes, dearies," she said in conclusion, laying her hand on the basket,
+"I expected this gift this morning; but many a time does our Father in
+heaven send a blessin' when an' where we _don't_ expect it.  Mind
+that--_mind ye that_."
+
+Jack had more than enough of mental food to digest that morning as he
+retraced his steps homeward through the deep snow; for he found that old
+Nell, not less than his mother, had treated him to a few puzzlers.  Poor
+boy, he little knew as he plodded on that he was that day about to enter
+into one of the darkest clouds of his young life.
+
+During his absence a letter had been received by his father, intimating
+that through the failure of a bank he was a ruined man.  The shock had
+paralysed the farmer, and when Jack entered his home he found him lying
+on his bed in a state of insensibility, from which he could not be
+rallied.  A few days later the old man died.
+
+Farmer Matterby's widow had few relatives, and none of these were in
+circumstances to help her in the day of trial.  They and her numerous
+friends did indeed what they could.  Besides offering sincere sympathy,
+they subscribed and raised a small sum to enable the bereaved woman and
+her only child to tide over present difficulties, but they could not
+enable her to continue to work the farm, and as most of her late
+husband's kindred had migrated to Canada, she had no one from whom she
+could naturally claim counsel or aid.  She was therefore thrown entirely
+on God; and it was with strange and solemn feelings that Jack kneeled by
+her side, and heard her pray in tones of anguish for help, light, and
+guidance, and especially that, whatever might become of herself, her
+dear boy might be preserved from evil and guided in ways of
+righteousness.
+
+A few months later, and the widow, gathering the small remnant of her
+possessions together, set off with her little boy to seek employment in
+London.  How many poor souls, in various ranks of life, must have turned
+their steps, in days gone by, towards that giant city in the sanguine
+hope of bettering their condition!  Mrs Matterby had no friends to whom
+she could go in London; but she could paint and draw and sing, and was
+fairly educated.  She would teach.  In the meantime she had a little
+money to start with.  Entertaining a suspicion that it might be
+considered a wildish scheme by her friends and neighbours, she resolved
+to say nothing about her plans to any one, save that she was going to
+London for a time.
+
+It was a touching scene, the parting of Jack and the Grove family.  The
+sturdy fisherman was at sea at the time, but old Nell was in her
+accustomed corner in the lowly bed with the ragged counterpane, where
+her uneventful, yet happy, life was spent; and little curly-headed
+Nellie was there, playing with the cat; and Natty was there, cutting out
+a first-rate man of war with a huge knife.
+
+"Granny," (Jack always called her "granny" like the rest), "granny, I've
+come to say good-bye.  I am going away f-f-for ever an' ever!"
+
+"Amen!" responded Natty, from the mere force of habit, for he was a
+constant responder at granny's family worship.
+
+"Ye don't know that, darlin'," replied old Nell.  "The Lord leads us in
+ways that we know not, an' it may be His good pleasure to bring you here
+again."
+
+"N-no; I'm quite _sure_ I'll never see you again," returned the boy,
+giving way to the sobs which he could not restrain.  "M-mother says we
+will never come back again,--n-never, _never_ more--"
+
+He broke down entirely at this point, and a few silent tears trickled
+over the kind old face of Nell.  Natty was too much of a man to give way
+out and out, but he snivelled a little in spite of himself.  As for
+Nellie, she stood there in open-eyed wonder, for she failed to quite
+understand the situation.  We will not prolong the painful scene.  When
+at length Jack had taken leave of them all--had kissed the two Nells and
+shaken hands with Natty--the younger Nell seemed to realise the facts of
+the case; for Jack saw her, as he glanced back for the last time,
+suddenly shut her large blue eyes, throw back her curly little head,
+open wide her pretty little mouth, and howl miserably.
+
+
+
+STORY THREE, CHAPTER 2.
+
+LOST IN LONDON.
+
+London in a fog is too well known to require description.  In an
+uncommonly thick fog, on a day in December of the following year, Mrs
+Matterby hurried along Fleet Street in the direction of the city,
+leading Jack by the hand.  Both were very wet, very cold, ravenously
+hungry, and rather poorly clad.  It was evident that things had not
+prospered with the widow.
+
+"Dear Jack," she said in a choking voice, as they hurried along the
+streets towards the wretched abode in the Tower Hamlets, to which they
+had been at length reduced, "dear Jack, my last human hope has failed.
+Mr Block has told me that I need not go there again; he has no more
+work for me."
+
+Jack's experience of life was too limited to enable him to understand
+fully the depth of distress, to which his mother had fallen--with health
+broken, money expended, and work not to be had except on terms which
+rendered life a misery, and prolonged existence almost an impossibility.
+But Jack's power of sympathy was strong and his passions were vehement.
+
+"Mother," he said, with tearful eyes, as he clung closer to her side, "I
+would _kill_ Mr Block if I could!"
+
+"Hush, dear boy!  You know that would be wrong and could do no good.  It
+is sinful even to feel such a desire."
+
+"How can I help it, mother!" returned Jack indignantly.  Then he asked,
+"What are we going to do now, mother?"
+
+For some time the poor widow did not reply; then she spoke in a low
+tone, as if murmuring to herself, "The last sixpence gone; the cupboard
+empty; nothing--nothing left to pawn--"
+
+She stopped short, and glanced hastily at her marriage ring.
+
+"Mother," said Jack, "have you not often told me that God will not
+forsake us?  Does it not seem as if He _had_ forsaken us now?"
+
+"It only seems like it, darling," returned the widow hurriedly.  "We
+don't understand His ways.  `Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him!'"
+
+It seemed as if God were about to test the faith of His servant, for at
+that moment a cab drove furiously round the corner of a street and
+knocked her down.  Jack was overturned at the same time.  Recovering
+himself, instantly, he found his mother in a state of unconsciousness,
+with blood flowing from a deep cut in her forehead.  In a state of
+semi-bewilderment the poor boy followed the stretcher, on which Mrs
+Matterby was carried to the nearest hospital, where he waited while his
+mother's injuries were examined.
+
+"My boy," said a young surgeon, returning to the waiting room, and
+patting Jack's head, "your mother has been rather badly hurt.  We must
+keep her here to look after her.  I daresay we shall soon make her well.
+Meanwhile you had better run home, and tell your father--if, that is--
+your father is at home, I suppose?"
+
+"No, sir; father's dead."
+
+"Well then your sister or aunt--I suppose there's some relative at home
+older than yourself?"
+
+"No, sir; none but mother an' me," whispered Jack.
+
+"No relations of any kind at all in London?"
+
+"None, sir.  We know nobody--at least not many, and they're all
+strangers."
+
+"A sad case," murmured the surgeon.  "Your mother is poor, I suppose?"
+
+"_Very_ poor, sir."
+
+"But of course you have a home of some sort, somewhere?"
+
+"Yes, it's not far from here."
+
+"Well, them, you'd better go home just now, for you can't see your
+mother to-night.  We dare not let her speak, but come back early
+to-morrow, and you shall hear about her--perhaps see her.  Here, put
+that in your pocket."
+
+Poor Jack took the shilling which the sympathetic surgeon thrust into
+his hand, and ran home in a state bordering on distraction; but it was
+not till he entered the shabby little room which he had begun to
+consider "home" that he realised the full weight of the calamity that
+had befallen him.  No mother's voice to welcome him; no bit of fire in
+the grate to warm; no singing kettle to cheer, or light of candle to
+dispel the gloom of rapidly approaching night.
+
+It was Christmas Day too.  In the morning he had gone forth with his
+mother--she in the sanguine hope of renewing an engagement in a
+clothier's shop, which terminated that day; he in the expectation of
+getting a few jobs of some sort--messages to run or horses to hold.
+Such were the circumstances to which they had been reduced in twelve
+months, Jack had arranged to call for his mother and walk home with her.
+On the way they were to invest a _very_ small part of the widow's
+earnings in "something nice" for their Christmas supper, and spend the
+evening together, chatting about the old home in Blackby, and father,
+and Natty Grove, and Nellie, and old Nell, in the happy days gone by.
+
+"And now!" thought Jack, seating himself on his little bed and glancing
+at that of his mother, which stood empty in the opposite
+corner--"now!--"
+
+But Jack could think no more.  A tremendous agony rent his breast, and a
+sharp cry escaped from him as he flung himself on his bed and burst into
+a passion of tears.
+
+Child-like, he sobbed himself to sleep, and did not awake till the sun
+was high next morning.  It was some time before he could recall what had
+occurred.  When he did so he began to weep afresh.  Leaping up, he was
+about to rush out of the house and make for the hospital, when he was
+checked at the door by the landlord--a hard, grinding, heartless man,
+who grew rich in oppressing the poor.
+
+"You seem to be in a hurry, youngster," he said, dragging the boy back
+by the collar, and looking hurriedly round the room.  "I've come for the
+rent.  Where's your mother?"
+
+In a sobbing voice Jack told him about the accident.
+
+"Well, I don't really believe you," said the man, with an angry frown;
+"but I'll soon find out if you're telling lies.  I'll go to the hospital
+and inquire for myself.  D'ee know anything about your mother's
+affairs?"
+
+"No, sir," said Jack, meekly, for he began to entertain a vague terror
+of the man.
+
+"No; I thought not.  Well, I'll enlighten you.  Your mother owes me
+three weeks' rent of this here room, and has got nothing to pay it with,
+as far as I knows, except these sticks o' furniture.  Now, if your
+mother is really in hospital, I'll come back here and bundle you out,
+an' sell the furniture to pay my rent.  I ain't a-goin' to be done out
+o' my money because your mother chooses to git run'd over."
+
+The landlord did not wait for a reply, but went out and slammed the
+door.
+
+Jack followed him in silent horror.  He watched him while he inquired at
+the gate of the hospital, and, after he had gone, went up timidly, rang
+the bell, and asked for his mother.
+
+"Mrs Matterby?" repeated the porter.  "Come in; I'll make inquiry."
+
+The report which he brought back fell like the blow of a sledge-hammer
+on the poor boy's heart.  His mother, they told him, was dead.  She had
+died suddenly in the night.
+
+There are times of affliction, when the human soul fails to find relief
+in tears or cries.  Poor Jack Matterby stood for some time motionless,
+as if paralysed, with glaring eyes and a face not unlike to that of
+death.  They sought to rouse him, but he could not speak.  Suddenly,
+observing the front door open, he darted out into the street, and ran
+straight home, where he flung himself on his mother's bed, and burst
+into an uncontrollable flood of tears.  By degrees the passion subsided,
+leaving only a stunned feeling behind, under the influence of which he
+lay perfectly still.
+
+The first thing that roused him was the sound of a heavy foot on the
+stair.  The memory of the landlord flashed into his mind and filled him
+with indescribable dread--dread caused partly by the man's savage aspect
+and nature, but much more by the brutal way in which he had spoken about
+his mother.  The only way in which to avoid a meeting was to rush past
+the man on the stair.  Fear and loathing made the poor boy forget, for
+the moment, his crushing sorrow.  He leaped up, opened the door, and,
+dashing downstairs, almost overturned the man who was coming up.  Once
+in the street, he ran straight on without thought, until he felt that he
+was safe from pursuit.  Then he stopped, and sat down on a door-step--to
+think what he should do; for, having been told that the furniture of his
+old home was to be sold, and himself turned out, he felt that returning
+there would be useless, and would only expose him to the risk of meeting
+the awful landlord.  While he was yet buried in thought, one of those
+sprightly creatures of the great city, known as street arabs, accosted
+him in a grave and friendly tone.
+
+"My sweet little toolip," he said, "can I do anythink for you?"
+
+Despite his grief Jack could scarcely forbear smiling at the absurdity
+of the question.
+
+"No, thank you," he replied.
+
+"Well now, look 'ere, my toolip," returned the arab in a confidential
+tone, "I've took quite a fancy to you; you've got such a look, some'ow,
+of my poor old grandmother.  Now, if you've no objection, I'd like to
+give you your breakfast.  You're 'ungry, I suppose?"
+
+Jack admitted that he was, and, after a moment's hesitation, accepted
+this surprisingly kind and liberal offer.  Taking him promptly by the
+arm his new friend hurried him to a pastry-cook's shop, and bade him
+"smell that," referring to the odours that ascended through a grating.
+
+"Ain't it 'eavenly?" he asked, with sparkling eyes.
+
+Jack admitted that it was very nice.
+
+"_So_ green, an' yet so fair!" murmured the arab, casting a look of
+admiration on his companion.  "Now I means to go into that there shop,"
+he added, returning to the confidential tone, "an' buy breakfast for
+you--for both on us.  But I couldn't go in, you know, with this 'ere
+shabby coat on, 'cause they wouldn't give me such good wittles if I did.
+Just change coats with me for a few minutes.  What!  You doubt me?  No
+one ever doubted Bob Snobbins without--without a-'urtin' of his
+feelin's."
+
+Whatever might have caused Jack to hesitate, the injured look on young
+Snobbins' countenance and the hurt tone were too much for him.  He
+exchanged coats with the young rascal, who, suddenly directing Jack's
+attention to some imaginary object of interest at one end of the street,
+made off at full speed towards the other end.  Our hero was, however, a
+famous runner.  He gave chase, caught the arab in a retired alley, and
+gave him an indignant punch in the head.
+
+But although Jack had plenty of courage and a good deal of strength, he
+was no match for a street warrior like Bob Snobbins, who turned about
+promptly, blackened both his opponent's eyes, bled his nose, swelled his
+lips, and finally knocked him into a pool of dirty water, after which he
+fled, just as a policeman came on the scene.
+
+The constable was a kindly man.  He asked Jack a few questions, which,
+however, the latter was too miserable to answer.
+
+"Well, well, my boy," said the constable gently, "you'd as well give up
+fightin'.  It don't pay, you see, in the long run.  Besides, you don't
+seem fit for it.  Cut away home now, and get your mother to clean you."
+
+This last remark caused Jack to run away fast enough with a bursting
+heart.  All day he wandered about the crowded streets, and no one took
+any notice of him, save a very few among the thousands, who cast on him
+a passing glance of pity.  But what could these do to help him?  Were
+not the streets swarming with such boys?
+
+And in truth Jack Matterby was a very pitiable object, at least
+according to the report of shop-mirrors, which told him that his face
+was discoloured and bloody, his coat indescribably dirty and ragged,
+besides being out of harmony with his trousers, and that his person
+generally was bedaubed with mud.  Hunger at last induced him to overcome
+his feelings of shame so far that he entered a baker's shop, but he was
+promptly ordered to be off.  Later in the day he entered another shop,
+the owner of which seemed to be of a better disposition.  Changing his
+shilling, he purchased a penny roll, with which he retired to a dark
+passage and dined.
+
+When night came on he expended another penny and supped, after which he
+sought for some place of shelter in which to sleep.  But wherever he
+went he found the guardians of the public requiring him to "move on."
+Several street arabs sought to make his acquaintance, but, with the
+memory of Bob Snobbins strong upon him, he declined their friendship.
+At last, wearied out and broken-hearted, he found a quiet corner under
+an archway, where he sat down and leaned his head against the wall,
+exclaiming, "I'm lost--lost!"  Then he wept quietly, and sought to find
+temporary relief in slumber.
+
+He was indeed lost, and more completely so, in the feeling of lonely
+isolation, perhaps, than he would have been if lost in the backwoods of
+America.  Yet he was not utterly lost, for the tender Shepherd was on
+his track.  Some such thought seemed to cross his mind; for he suddenly
+began to pray, and thoughts about the old home in Blackby, and of the
+Grove family, comforted him a little until he fell asleep on his hard
+bed.
+
+But, for the time being, the poor boy _was_ lost--lost in London!  His
+disreputable face and discreditable coat argued a dissipated character--
+hence no one would employ him.  Ere long necessity compelled him to
+accept the society of street arabs, and soon he became quite as sharp,
+though not quite as wicked, as they.  But day by day he sank lower and
+lower, and evil at which he would have shuddered at first became at last
+familiar.
+
+He did not sink without a struggle, however, and he would have returned
+to the place where his mother had died, to ask help of the young surgeon
+who had expressed sympathy with him, but, with the carelessness of
+boyhood, he had forgotten the name of the hospital, and did not know
+where, in the great wilderness of bricks and mortar, to search for it.
+As for the home from which he had fled, the memory of the landlord still
+kept him carefully clear of that.
+
+But Jack's mother was _not_ dead!  In hospitals--as in the best of
+well-regulated families--mistakes will sometimes happen.  The report
+which had proved so disastrous to our poor hero referred to another
+woman who had died.  A messenger had been at once sent, by the young
+surgeon before mentioned, to tell Jack of the error; but when the
+messenger arrived the boy had flown--as already described.  Indeed, it
+was he whom Jack had passed on the stair.
+
+It was long before Mrs Matterby recovered, for the disappearance of her
+boy caused a relapse; and when at last she left the hospital, feeble and
+homeless, she went about for many months, searching at once for work and
+for her lost treasure.
+
+Christmas came again, and found Jack Matterby at nearly the lowest point
+in his downward career.  It is due to him to say, however, that he had
+not up to that time, been guilty of any criminal act that could bring
+him with the grasp of human law; but in word and deed he had begun, more
+and more, to break the law of God: so that if poor Mrs Matterby had at
+that time succeeded in finding her son, it is probable that her joy
+would have been overwhelmed with terrible grief.
+
+It was not exactly Christmas morning, but it was the Christmas season of
+the year, when our little hero, wearied in spirit and body with the hard
+struggle for life, sauntered down the now familiar Strand in the hope of
+finding some odd job to do.  He paused before a confectioner's shop,
+and, being very hungry, was debating with himself the propriety of
+giving up the struggle, and coolly helping himself to a pie!  You may be
+sure that bad invisible spirits were at his elbow just then to encourage
+him.  But God sent a good angel also, and she was visible--being in the
+form of a thin little old lady.
+
+"You'd like a bun, I know," she said, putting a penny into Jack's hand.
+
+"God bless you, ma'am--yes," burst from the astonished boy.
+
+"Go in and buy one.  Then, come and tell me all about you."
+
+The thin little old lady was one of those followers of the Lamb who do
+not wait for Christmas to unlock their sympathies.  The river of her
+love and pity was _always_ overflowing, so that there was no room for
+increase to a deluge at Christmas time--though she rejoiced to note the
+increase in the case of others, and wished that the flood might become
+perennial.  To this lady Jack laid bare his inmost heart, and she led
+him back to the Saviour.
+
+"Now, Jack, let me ask you one question," she said; "would you like to
+go to Canada?"
+
+With tremendous energy Jack answered, "_Wouldn't_ I!"
+
+"Then," said the old lady, "to Canada you shall go."
+
+
+
+STORY THREE, CHAPTER 3.
+
+THE DOUBLE RESCUE.
+
+And Jack Matterby went!  But before he went he had to go through a
+preliminary training, for his regular schooling had ceased when his
+father died, and he had learned no trade.
+
+In those days there were no splendid institutions for waifs and strays
+such as now exist, but it must not be supposed that there was no such
+thing as "hasting to the rescue."  Thin little old Mrs Seaford had
+struck out the idea for herself, and had acted on it for some years in
+her own vigorous way.  She took Jack home, and lodged him in her own
+house with two or three other boys of the same stamp--waifs.  Jack
+elected to learn the trade of a carpenter, and Mrs Seaford, finding
+that he had been pretty well grounded in English, taught him French, as
+that language, she told him, was much spoken in Canada.  Above all, she
+taught him those principles of God's law without which a human being is
+but poorly furnished even for the life that now is, to say nothing of
+that which is to come.
+
+In a few months Jack was ready for exportation!  A few months more, and
+he found himself apprenticed to a farmer, not far from the shores of
+that mighty fresh-water sea, Ontario.  Time passed, and Jack Matterby
+became a trusted servant and a thorough farmer.  He also became a big,
+dashing, and earnest boy.  More time passed, and Jack became a handsome
+young man, the bosom friend of his employer.  Yet a little more time
+winged its silent way, and Jack became John Matterby, Esquire, of Fair
+Creek Farm, heir to his former master's property, and one of the
+wealthiest men of the province--not a common experience of poor emigrant
+waifs, doubtless, but, on the other hand, by no means unprecedented.
+
+It must not be supposed that during all those years Jack forgot the
+scenes and people of the old land.  On the contrary, the longer he
+absented himself from the old home the more firmly and tenderly did the
+old memories cling and cluster round his heart; and many a story and
+anecdote did he relate about these, especially during the Christmas
+season of each year, to his old master and to Nancy Briggs, in the log
+homestead of Ontario.
+
+Nancy was a waif, who had been sent out by the same thin little old lady
+who had sent Jack out.  She was very pretty, and possessed of
+delightfully amiable domestic qualities.  She grew up to be a very
+handsome girl, and was a very bright sunbeam in the homestead.  But Jack
+did not fall in love with her.  All unknown to himself his heart was
+pre-occupied.  Neither did Nancy fall in love with Jack.  All
+unwittingly she was reserving herself for another lot.  Of course our
+hero corresponded diligently with the thin little old lady, and
+gladdened her heart by showing and expressing strong sympathy with the
+waifs of the great city; more than once, in his earlier letters,
+mentioning one named Bob Snobbins, about whose fate he felt some
+curiosity, but in regard to whose home, if such existed, he could give
+no information.
+
+Twice during those years Jack also wrote to the Grove family; but as he
+received no answer on either occasion, he concluded that the father must
+have been drowned, that old Nell was dead, and the family broken up.
+Need we add that the memory of his dear mother never faded or grew dim?
+But this was a sacred memory, in regard to which he opened his lips to
+no one.
+
+At last there came a day when John Matterby, being in the prime of life,
+with ample means and time to spare, set his heart on a holiday and a
+visit to the old country--the thin little old lady being yet alive.  It
+was not so easy, however, for our hero to get away from home as one
+might imagine; for, besides being a farmer, he was manager of a branch
+bank, secretary to several philanthropic societies, superintendent of a
+Sunday-school, and, generally, a helper of, and sympathiser with, all
+who loved the Lord and sought to benefit their fellow-men.  But, being a
+man of resolution, he cut the cords that attached him to these things,
+appointed Miss Briggs to superintend the Sunday-school in his absence,
+and set sail for England--not in a steamer, as most rich men would have
+done, but in a sailing ship, because the vessel happened to be bound for
+the port of Blackby, the home of his childhood.
+
+It was winter when he set sail, and the storms of winter were having
+high jinks and revels on the deep in the usual way at that season of the
+year.  Jack's vessel weathered them all till it reached the shores of
+old England.  Then the storm-fiend broke loose with unwonted fury, and,
+as if out of spite, cast the good ship on the rocks lying a little to
+the eastward of the port of Blackby.
+
+It was a tremendous storm!  The oldest inhabitant of Blackby said, as
+well as his toothless gums would let him, that, "it wos the wust gale as
+had blow'd since he wos a leetle booy--an' that warn't yesterday--no,
+nor yet the day before!"
+
+The gale was at its height, in the grey of early morning, when the ship
+struck, and all the manhood of the port and neighbouring village were
+out to render aid, if possible, and to gaze and sympathise.  But who
+could render aid to a vessel which was rolling on those black rocks in a
+caldron of white foam, with a hundred yards of swirling breakers that
+raged and roared like a thousand lions between it and the base of the
+cliffs?  Even the noble lifeboat would have been useless in such a
+place.  But hark! a cry is raised--the coastguardmen and the rocket!
+Yes, there is one hope for them yet--under God.  Far below the men are
+seen staggering along over the shingle, with their life-saving apparatus
+in a hand-cart.
+
+Soon the tripod is set up, and the rocket is fired, but the line falls
+to leeward.  Another is tried; it falls short.  Still another--it goes
+far to windward.  Again and again they try, but without success, until
+all their rockets are expended.  But these bold men of the coastguard
+are not often or easily foiled.  They send for more rockets to the next
+station.  Meanwhile the terrible waves are doing their awful work,
+dashing the ship on the rocks as if she were a mere toy--as indeed she
+is, in their grasp.  Can nothing be done?
+
+"She'll never hold together till the rockets come," said a young seaman
+stepping out from the crowd.  "Here, let me have the line, and stand by
+to pay out."
+
+"Don't try it, lad, it'll be your death."
+
+The youth paid no regard to this advice.  "A man can only die once," he
+remarked in a low voice, more as if speaking to himself than replying to
+the caution, while he quickly tied the end of the light rope round his
+waist and dashed into the sea.
+
+Oh! it is grand and heart-stirring to see a stalwart youth imperilling
+life and limb for the sake of others; to see a powerful swimmer
+breasting the billows with a fixed purpose to do or die.  But it is
+terrible and spirit-crushing to see such a one tossed by the breakers as
+if he were a mere baby, and hurled back helpless on the sand.  Twice did
+the young sailor dash in, and twice was he caught up like a cork and
+hurled back, while the people on shore, finding their remonstrances
+useless, began to talk of using force.
+
+The man's object was to dive _through_ the first wave.  If he could
+manage this--and the second--the rest would not be beyond the power of a
+strong man.  A third time he leaped into the rushing flood, and this
+time was successful.  Soon he stood panting on the deck of the stranded
+vessel, almost unable to stand, and well he knew that there was not a
+moment to lose, for the ship was going to pieces!  Jack Matterby,
+however, knew well what to do.  He drew out the hawser of the rocket
+apparatus, fixed the various ropes, and signalled to those on shore to
+send out the sling life-buoy, and then the men of the coastguard began
+to haul the passengers and crew ashore, one at a time.
+
+The young sailor, recovering in a few minutes, lent a hand.  Jack knew
+him the instant he heard his voice, but took no notice of him, for it
+was a stern matter of life or death with them all just then.
+
+When Jack and the captain stood at last awaiting their turn, and
+watching the last of the crew being dragged over the boiling surf, our
+hero turned suddenly, and, grasping the young sailor's hand with the
+grip of a vice, said, "God bless you, Natty Grove!"
+
+Nat gazed as if he had been stunned.  "_Can_ it be?" he exclaimed.  "We
+had thought you dead years ago!"
+
+"Thank God, I'm not only alive but hearty.  Here comes the life-buoy.
+Your turn next.  But one word before--old Nell; and--Nellie?"
+
+"Both well, and living with your mother--"
+
+"My--" Jack could not speak, a tremendous shock seemed to rend his
+heart.  Young Grove felt that he had been too precipitate.
+
+"Your mother is alive, Jack, and--"
+
+He stopped, for the captain said quickly, "Now, then, get in.  No time
+to lose."
+
+But Jack could not get in.  If he had not been a strong man he must have
+fallen on the deck.  As it was, he felt stunned and helpless.
+
+"Here, captain," cried Nat Grove, leaping into the life-buoy, "lift him
+into my arms.  The ropes are strong enough for both."
+
+Scarce knowing what he did, Jack allowed himself to be half-lifted into
+the buoy, in which his old friend held him fast.  A few minutes more,
+and they were dragged safely to land and the ringing cheers and
+congratulations of the assembled multitude.  The captain came last, so
+that, when the ship finally went to pieces, not a human life was lost--
+even the ship's cat was among the number of the saved, the captain
+having carried it ashore in his arms.
+
+Now, there are some scenes in this life which will not bear description
+in detail.  Such was the meeting of our hero with his long-lost mother.
+We refrain from lifting the curtain here.  But there is no reason why we
+should not re-introduce the joyful and grateful pair at a later period
+of that same eventful day, when, seated together by the bedside of old
+Nell, they recounted their experiences--yes, the same old woman, but
+thinner and wrinkleder, and smaller in every way; and the same bed, as
+far as appearance went, though softer and cosier, and bigger in all
+ways.  On the other side of the bed sat the manly form of Natty Grove.
+But who is that fair girl with the curling golden hair, whose face
+exhibits one continuous blush, and whose entire body, soul and spirit is
+apparently enchained by an insignificant piece of needlework?  Can that
+be Nellie Grove, whom we last saw with her eyes shut and her mouth
+open--howling?  Yes, it is she, and--but let Mrs Matterby explain.
+
+"Now, Jack," said that lady in a firm tone, "it's of no use your asking
+question after question of every one in this way, and not even waiting
+for answers, and everybody speaking at once--"
+
+"Excuse me, dearest mother, Miss Nellie Grove has not yet spoken at
+all."
+
+"_Miss_ Nellie, indeed!  Times are changed,"--murmured Natty, with a
+look of surprise.
+
+"Her not speaking proves her the wisest of us all," resumed the widow,
+looking at Old Nell, who with tremulous head nodded violent approval.
+You must know, old Nell had become as deaf as a post, and, being
+incapable of understanding anything, she gratified her natural
+amiability by approving of everything--at least everything that was
+uttered by speakers with a visible smile.  When they spoke with gravity,
+old Nell shook her tremulous head, and put on a look of alarmingly
+solemn sympathy.  On the present occasion, however, the antique old
+thing seemed to have been affected with some absolutely new, and
+evidently quaint, ideas, for she laughed frequently and immoderately,
+especially when she gazed hard at Jack Matterby after having looked long
+at Nellie Grove!
+
+"Now, Jack," resumed the widow for the fiftieth time, "you must know
+that after I lost you, and had given you up for dead, I came back here,
+feeling an intense longing to see once more the old home, and I began a
+school.  In course of years God sent me prosperity, notwithstanding the
+murmurings of rebellion which rose in my heart when I thought of _you_.
+The school became so big that I had to take a new house--that in which
+you now sit--and sought about for a teacher to help me.  Long before
+that time poor Ned Grove had been drowned at sea.  Your old friend Natty
+there had become the first mate to a merchantman, and helped to support
+his grandmother.  Nellie, whose education I had begun, as you know, when
+you were a boy, had grown into a remarkably clever and pretty girl, as,
+no doubt, you will admit.  She had become a daily governess in the
+family of a gentleman who had come to live in the neighbourhood.  Thus
+she was enabled to assist her brother in keeping up the old home, and
+took care of granny."
+
+At this point our hero, as he looked at the fair face and modest
+carriage of his old playmate heartily admitted, (to himself), that she
+was much more than "pretty," and felt that he now understood how a
+fisherman's daughter had, to his intense surprise, grown up with so much
+of gentle manners, and such soft lady-like hands.  But he said never a
+word!
+
+"Most happily for me," continued Mrs Matterby, "Nellie lost her
+situation at the time I speak of, owing to the death of her employer.
+Thus I had the chance of securing her at once.  And now, here we have
+been together for some years, and I hope we may never part as long as we
+live.  We had considerable difficulty in getting old Nell to quit the
+cottage and come here.  Indeed, we should never have succeeded, I think,
+had it not been for Natty--"
+
+"That's true," interrupted Nat, with a laugh.
+
+"The dear old woman was too deaf to understand, and too obstinate to
+move: so one day I put the bed clothes over her head, gathered her and
+them up in my arms, and brought her up here bodily, very much as I
+carried _you_ ashore, Jack, in the life-buoy, without asking leave.  And
+she has been content and happy ever since."
+
+What more of this tale there is to tell shall be told, reader, by
+excerpts from our hero's Christmas letter to thin little Mrs Seaford,
+as follows:--
+
+  "Pardon my seeming neglect, dear old friend.  I meant to have run up
+  to town to see you the instant I set foot in England, but you must
+  admit that my dear, long-lost mother had prior claims.  Pardon, also,
+  my impudence in now asking you to come and see _me_.  You _must_ come.
+  I will take no denial, for I want you to rejoice at my wedding!  Yes,
+  as old Nell once said to me, `God sends us a blessing sometimes when
+  we least expect it.'  He has not only restored to me my mother, but
+  has raised me from the lowest rung in the ladder to the very highest,
+  and given me the sweetest, and most--.  But enough.  Come and see for
+  yourself.  Her name is Nellie.  But I have more to astonish you with.
+  Not only do I take Nellie back with me to my home in the new world,
+  but I take my mother also, and Natty Grove, and _old Nell herself_!
+  How we got her to understand what we want her to do, could not be told
+  in less than four hundred pages of small type.  Nat did it, by means
+  of signs, symbols, and what _he_ styles facial-logarithms.  At all
+  events she has agreed to go, and we hope to set sail next June.
+  Moreover, I expect to get _you_ to join us.  Don't laugh.  I mean it.
+  There is good work to be done.  Canada needs philanthropic Christians
+  as well as England.
+
+  "You will scarcely credit me when I say that I have become a
+  match-maker--not one of those `little' ones, in whose welfare you are
+  so much interested, but a real one.  My deep design is upon your
+  partner, Natty Grove.  Yes, your _partner_--for were not _you_ the
+  instrument used in rescuing my soul, and _he_ my body? so that you
+  have been partners in this double rescue.  Well, it is my intention to
+  introduce Natty Grove to Nancy Briggs, and abide the result!  Once on
+  a time I had meant her for Bob Snobbins, but as you have failed to
+  hunt him up, he must be left to suffer the consequences.  D'you know I
+  have quite a pathetic feeling of tenderness for the memory of that too
+  sharp little boy.  Little does he know how gladly I would give him the
+  best coat in my possession--if I could only find him!
+
+  "Now, dearest of old friends, I must stop.  Nellie is sitting on one
+  side of me, mother on the other, and old Nell in front--which will
+  account to you, in some degree, for the madness of my condition.
+
+  "Once more, in the hope of a joyful meeting, I wish you `a merry
+  Christmas and a happy New Year.'"
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Coxswain's Bride, by R.M. Ballantyne
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