lies beyond Kerguelen and the world.  She prayed that the child might die first.  It was awful to think that perhaps it might be the other way about:  she might die first, and the child might be left to starve beside her.  The morrow would be Christmas Day.  Last Christmas Day she had spent with her dead sister at Birmingham.  She remembered that they went to church in the morning, and after dinner she had finished correcting the last revises of “Jemima’s Vow.”  Well, it seemed likely that long before another Christmas came she would have gone to join little Jeannie.  And then, being a good and religious girl, Augusta rose to her knees and prayed to Heaven with all her heart and soul to rescue them from their terrible position, or, if she was doomed to perish, at least to save the child.

And so the long cold night wore away in thought and vigil, till at last, some two hours before the dawn, she got to sleep.  When she opened her eyes again it was broad daylight, and little Dick, who had been awake some time beside her, was sitting up playing with the shell which Bill and Johnnie had used to drink rum out of.  She rose and put the child’s things a little to rights, and then, as it was not raining, told him to run outside while she went through the form of dressing by taking off such garments as she had, shaking them, and putting them on again.  She was slowly going through this process, and wondering how long it would be before her shoulders ceased to smart from the effects of the tattooing, when Dick came running in without going through the formality of knocking.

“Oh, Auntie!  Auntie!” he sang out in high glee, “here’s a big ship coming sailing along.  Is it Mummy and Daddie coming to fetch Dick?”

Augusta sank back faint with the sudden revulsion of feeling.  If there was a ship, they were saved—­snatched from the very jaws of death.  But perhaps it was the child’s fancy.  She threw on the body of her dress; and, her long yellow hair—­which she had in default of better means been trying to comb out with a bit of wood—­streaming behind her, she took the child by the hand, and flew as fast as she could go down the little rocky promontory off which Bill and Johnnie had met their end.  Before she got half-way down it, she saw that the child’s tale was true—­for there, sailing right up the fjord from the open sea, was a large vessel.  She was not two hundred yards from where she stood, and her canvas was being rapidly furled preparatory to the anchor being dropped.

Thanking Providence for the sight as she never thanked anything before, Augusta sped on till she got to the extreme point of the promontory, and stood there waving Dick’s little cap towards the vessel, which moved slowly and majestically on, till presently, across the clear water, came the splash of the anchor, followed by the sound of the fierce rattle of the chain through the hawse-pipes.  Then there came another sound—­the glad sound of human voices cheering.  She had been seen.