“A quarter of an hour more and all is over,” thought he.  “The people at Llandudno must see our burning ship, and will come out in their boats.”  He kept in the line of light, although it did not lead him direct to the shore, in order that they might be seen.  He swam with desperation.  One moment he thought he had heard her last gasp rattle through the rush of the waters; and all strength was gone, and he lay on the waves as if he himself must die, and go with her spirit straight through that purple lift to heaven; the next he heard the splash of oars, and raised himself and cried aloud.  The boatmen took them in—­and examined her by the lantern—­and spoke in Welsh—­and shook their heads.  Frank threw himself on his knees, and prayed them to take her to land.  They did not know his words, but they understood his prayer.  He kissed her lips—­he chafed her hands—­he wrung the water out of her hair—­he held her feet against his warm breast.

“She is not dead,” he kept saying to the men, as he saw their sorrowful, pitying looks.

The kind people at Llandudno had made ready their own humble beds, with every appliance of comfort they could think of, as soon as they understood the nature of the calamity which had befallen the ship on their coasts.  Frank walked, dripping, bareheaded, by the body of his Margaret, which was borne by some men along the rocky sloping shore.

“She is not dead!” he said.  He stopped at the first house they came to.  It belonged to a kind-hearted woman.  They laid Maggie in her bed, and got the village doctor to come and see her.

“There is life still,” said he, gravely.

“I knew it,” said Frank.  But it felled him to the ground.  He sank first in prayer, and then in insensibility.  The doctor did everything.  All that night long he passed to and fro from house to house; for several had swum to Llandudno.  Others, it was thought, had gone to Abergele.

In the morning Frank was recovered enough to write to his father, by Maggie’s bedside.  He sent the letter off to Conway by a little bright-looking Welsh boy.  Late in the afternoon she awoke.

In a moment or two she looked eagerly round her, as if gathering in her breath; and then she covered her head and sobbed.

“Where is Edward?” asked she.

“We do not know,” said Frank, gravely.  “I have been round the village, and seen every survivor here; he is not among them, but he may be at some other place along the coast.”

She was silent, reading in his eyes his fears—­his belief.

At last she asked again.

“I cannot understand it.  My head is not clear.  There are such rushing noises in it.  How came you there?” She shuddered involuntarily as she recalled the terrible where.

For an instant he dreaded, for her sake, to recall the circumstances of the night before; but then he understood how her mind would dwell upon them until she was satisfied.