* * * * *

Some days later the passengers and crew from the lost “Eagle” were landed at Liverpool by the steamer “Seneca,” which had picked them up at sea.  The “Seneca” was a slow old craft, but she got there all right.

A little grimy tender carried Bruce, Jack, Harry and the tutor from the “Seneca” to the floating dock.  It was a sad and wretched-looking party.

On the dock stood a young man who shouted to them and waved his hand.

Jack Diamond started, gasped, clutched Browning and whispered: 

“Look—­look there, Bruce!  Tell me if I am going crazy, or do you see somebody who looks like—­”

Harry Rattleton clutched the big fellow by the other side, spluttering: 

“Am I doing gaffy—­I mean going daffy?  Look there!  Who is that waving his hand to us?”

“It’s the ghost of Frank Merriwell, as true as there are such things as ghosts!” muttered Browning.

But it was no ghost.  It was Frank Merriwell in the flesh, alive and well!  He greeted them as they came off the tender.  He caught them in his arms, laughing, shouting, overjoyed.  And they, realizing it really was him, hugged him and wept like a lot of big-hearted, manly young men.

Frank explained in a few words.  He told how, after they had left him, he had belted himself well with life-preservers and left the “Eagle” in time to get away before the explosion.  Then he was picked up by an Atlantic liner, which brought him to Liverpool in advance of his friends.

Thus he was there to receive them, and it seemed that the sea had given up its dead.

[The end.]