tryin' his new-fangled cures. But, by Gum! he shanna bring 'em here. Ah, lordy, lordy!' he cried, she'll go yet! She wunna stand another like that! She'll drive! She'll drive !'

The squall had overtaken and flown upon the schooner with its blinding envelopment of rain and wind. She staggered and wallowed on her beam-ends in the trough of the sea, and as the storm swept over her and mingled its streaming darkness with the gathering shades of evening she was obscured for a moment or two from those on shore. Would she reappear? or, was she gone for ever, doctor and all? Presently she was descried plunging valiantly as before, straight at the pier-head; she had not been driven half a cable's length from her course. Cripplegarth silently, doggedly watched her approach.

'She'll do it!' was the reluctant and alarmed mutter that went round among the wagging heads and uneasy shoulders.

And she did it. She shot round the pier and dropped her mainsail in the true Twyscar fashion, and while Cripplegarth glared in discomfiture, she slid in towards the lighthouse, bringing her offensive human cargo under their very noses. Even then, however, her way' was exhausted, and the strong undertow might have carried her away, but that for very shame they could not refuse to throw her a rope. They were going to haul her in.

'Avast there!' cried the harbour-master; 'you can't go into harbour, skipper.'

What's that for, Mr. Harbour-master? I must go in.'

'Keep a civil tongue, skipper. You must go where you're told, or go somewhere else: you must moor here.'

So the schooner was moored just off the lighthouse, outside the mouth of the harbour and in its out-draught. The young doctor jumped ashore in a fine passion.

"You'll repent this!' he said as he passed Cripplegarth and strode away.

III.

DARKNESS seemed to envelop sea and land, and the fury of the storm grew rabid. Spectators speedily vanished from the pier, and from the shore too, which was made untenable by the rushing surf, which would, when least expected, sweep swiftly from the sands up into the yards and against the houses, and by the stinging bitter rain, peculiar to such a storm, compounded of sea and cloud spray and fine sand, driving through the garments and almost through the skin. The calm light of the light house was lit, beneath it streamed the lurid flare of the brazier, and beneath it again on the pavement paced the dark, stormy figure of the self-con

stituted guardian of Twyscar health and reputation. As he tramped sturdily up and down, careless and scarcely conscious of the persistent buffetings of the storm, in his tough, dogged nature his half-baffled resolution was growing to heroic proportions. As harbour-master his will had always been unquestioned as law, and it must be admitted that until this crisis it had ruled fairly and honestly; and now, that it should be set aside and frustrated was not to be borne. He had resolved and said (in his headstrong heat, he had now half-forgotten why) that that schooner should not enter his harbour; and there it was straining at its cables under his very nose-though, indeed, not quite in the harbour! That meddling young doctor would be back by-and-by with cabs or vehicles of some sort to carry away the smitten' people on board and spread the horrible infection throughout the town.

'He shanna! By the Lord, he shanna!' and the old man clenched his fists.

But how?-how? He must be somehow prevented at once, or he could not be prevented at all; and that would be gall and wormwood.

Up and down, up and down, with a keen revengeful eye on the deck of the schooner and the skipper who now paced it and now disappeared below. How the outward rush of the undercurrent made the vessel tug and 'pace' at her cables, which had become somewhat slack, and cracked and creaked with every recurring strain. If they would only snap, then-! All at once he remembered Sam's reminiscence of ships wrenched from their moorings even in the harbour by the outdraught in a Nor'easter. He noted that the skipper was not on deck, and he went and examined both cables. That from the bows had the greater strain and passed through the gap of a large double block and pulley of the kind commonly affixed flat-wise to the edges of piers and quays; the other had less strain, and his heart leapt to observe it was loosely knotted about the mooring-post; one of the ties in the knot was already almost undone he saw clearly now what he would do. But the skipper had returned on deck, and he must wait. He entered his snuggery at the base of the lighthouse, and issued again with a hatchet in his hand. By-and-by the skipper went below again : this was Cripplegarth's opportunity.

He rapidly arranged the fastenings of the looser cable so that it would drag itself free when full strain were once put upon it. Then he went to the block and pulley, where the other was yawing to and fro and fraying itself, and he set the sharp edge of the axe for it to rub on. This done he resumed his sturdy, measured tramp on the stones.

VOL. XLIII, NO. CLXXII.

G G

All unconscious of the fate slowly creeping upon him and his helpless wife and crew, the skipper wearily paced the deck and wondered what delayed the doctor coming to their rescue. Under the load of fear and exhaustion which oppressed him, he swore to himself that, once his dear Susy were well enough and she and the timber landed in Bideford, never would he set foot on ship again. But why did not the doctor come? Was it only sleeplessness or was it also presentiment that made his heart ache with dread, as he listened to the roar and hiss of the storm from which the pier sheltered him, as he felt his ship painfully groaning and straining on her moorings, and as he watched the wild flare of the brazier above, and the grim sinister figure of that hard old man, who seemed in his lonely persistent pacing like a wild beast waiting to spring on his prey?

Why did not the doctor come?-He went below again and looked at his bonny wife, now sleeping with soothing wet cloths about her head. He then went forward to see the two men: the lad whom he had left by them was asleep, and they were tossing and moaning and mumbling.

'Well, well, poor lad! he's as tired as a log.'

He gave the men drink and refreshed them with cool cloths, and then returned on deck. He, poor fellow! could not rest. Oh, why did not the doctor? He caught the rumble of wheelscab-wheels-upon the pier: the doctor was coming at last.

But the ear of that sinister watchful man above had also caught the sound of wheels. In an instant he was at the edge of the pier and bending over, and before the skipper could conceive what he was about, the schooner was drifting away, and the cables splashed into the sea.

You infernal villain!' he yelled, and rushed to the wheel.

The next quarter of an hour was to the skipper a desperate, almost delirious hand-to-hand fight with the rush and whirl and pitiless pelting of the storm. He reached the forecastle somehow and roused the boy, by dint of shouting and dragging, to a sense of the situation; he was handling the wheel while the boy let out the jib; he was borne on by mighty hissing seas he knew not whither, except that it was farther and farther from the pier whose light grew yellower and smaller. He knew now that his schooner was to become a wreck; it was of no use trying to run out to sea; he could only strive to run her ashore on the beach. But a vast wave swept on the ship broadside, burst over her, and knocked him down. He clung to the wheel, but in a moment he let it go: it was of no use: either the rudder or rudder-chain was broken. The ship now lay and was swept away

at the cruel mercy of the waves-swept with wind and current away to south'ard against the dark cliffs, whose hollow roar, as they kept the breakers at bay, stunned the ears and made the blood run cold.

That the dear helpless Susy must be flung to be torn between these Titanic combatants! Good Lord, deliver us, and forgive that inhuman old man!'

It scarcely mattered that there was no boat left to launch, for it could not have lived a moment in such a sea. What, then, was to be done? He got some tow, lit it, and made the lad swing it to show a flare. But presently this was put out and the lad almost swept overboard by a heavy sea. He recollected his doublebarreled rifle in the cabin; he brought it on deck, and fired it off. Surely now his distress was known, and kind souls would rush to his rescue; for kind souls there must be in Twyscar: it was an English town, and had seafaring men of its own. Yet, though lights burned steadily and brightly in the houses on the cliffs, he saw no lights appear along the shore. Were he and his quite, quite forsaken ? . . . It seemed to him that he had been driving thus for hours through the storm. His body was growing numb and his mind stupid; the wind buffeted him, the waves burst upon the deck and drenched him, but he was no longer conscious of them. His one thought, growing ever more wild and distracting, was only Susy! Susy!'

But in reality it could not have been more than half-an-hour from the moment he knew he had left the pier before he felt the ship strike on the sunken rocks and woke anew to the necessity for instant action.

The deck-load!-that was his only hope! They might get ashore on it! He descended to the cabin. To his dismay, he saw that the water had already entered, and that Susy lay calmly asleep with the few bedclothes she had endured upon her all wet. In sudden despair at the thought that she would probably never open her eyes upon him again, he stood paralysed. Then he bent down and passionately kissed her, calling 'Susy! Susy! my dear, dear wife!' She turned and murmured, and as if with a sudden inspiration (he remembered hearing among the old folk at home that sea-wet, if well wrapt in thick dry things, would not give cold), he wrapped her in the feather-bed on which she lay and which the water had not yet touched, then he swathed her tightly in all the blankets he could find, took off his oil-skin and put it about her, and then above all wrapped a stout tarpauling which completely encased her. He carried her thus on deck, and lashed her to the deck-load. Then he struggled to the forecastle, wrapped the sailors

in what things he could find, and carried them one by one and lashed them also to the timber. He undid the fastenings which bound this improvised raft to the deck, and shouting to the lad, 'Hold on for your life!' he waited for the next big wave to break over the ship and carry the raft away. It came, and they were swept into the seething, hissing cauldron of waters. . . . Then he knew no more,—but that he clutched and clung with tearing nails and peeling fingers, that he was blinded and choked, beaten and bruised-till he came to himself on a ledge in the cliff, and let the desolate thought sweep over him, 'I am alone! Susy is gone!' But presently his heart bounded to see higher up the ledge the ruins of the raft, and to find close to his hand the line which connected him with the tarpaulin which lay upon it. Susy was near to him! But was she alive? He crept to her her eyes were closed, and her face was cold! It could not be she was dead! She must not die!-She might only have swooned. unbound her and took her in all her wrappings to carry her away. But his heart fell again: how could he with his burden escape from that cleft in the cliff up its rugged side? He must wait a little till he had recovered some strength.

He crouched as far back as he could with his wife in his arms. The cruel wolfish waves unweariedly leapt up at him, and with cold, strenuous fingers tried to tear him and his precious burden down. In their disappointed fury they hissed, and roared, and spat at him. The wind smote him and tried to push or snatch him from his place, and, as if to dizzy him, whirled great sponges of foam about his head and away up into the cliff. But he clung to the rock.

Then he felt strong enough to attempt to climb out of his perilous perch.

That evening of the fifth of March the Managing Committee of the Cliff Gardens and Promenade held their annual dinner in the banqueting-room of the Hall by the Sea. The sea climbing up their massive wall derisively flung spray and foam and shreds of seaweed at their lighted windows, but they caused the shutters to be closed to keep all thought of the sea out, and they rubbed their hands and sat down to eat and drink and to be as merry as became magistrates of the town and fathers of families. Now, it happened in Twyscar at that time, as it happens always and everywhere, that one corporate capacity attracted another; if a man was a magistrate, he was sure also to be on the Cliff Committee;' and if he was on the Cliff Committee,' he was certain to

6

be on the Harbour Commission.' So all the men who cheerfully