beam ends.  Thurstane was four or five times tossed and as often submerged.  The waves, the wind, and the wreck played with him successively or all together.  It was an outrage and a torment which surpassed some of the tortures of the Inquisition.  First came a quick and breathless plunge; then he was imbedded in the rushing, swirling waters, drumming in his ears and stifling his breath; then he was dragged swiftly upward, the sling turning him out of it.  It seemed to him that the breath would depart from his body before the transit was over.  When at last he landed and was detached from the cordage, he was so bruised, so nearly drowned, so every way exhausted, that he could not stand.  He lay for quite a while motionless, his head swimming, his legs and arms twitching convulsively, every joint and muscle sore, catching his breath with painful gasps, almost fainting, and feeling much as if he were dying.

He had meant to help save the captain and sailors.  But there was no more work in him, and he just had strength to walk up to the village, a citizen holding him by either arm.  As soon as he could speak so as to be understood, he asked, first in English and then in Spanish, “How is the lady?”

“She is insensible,” was the reply—­a reply of unmeant cruelty.

Remembering how he had suffered, Thurstane feared lest Clara had received her death-stroke in the slings, and he tottered forward eagerly, saying, “Take me to her.”

Arrived at the house where she lay, he insisted upon seeing her, and had his way.  He was led into a room; he did not see and could never remember what sort of a room it was; but there she was in bed, her face pale and her eyes closed; he thought she was dead, and he nearly fell.  But a pitying womanly voice murmured to him, “She lives,” with other words that he did not understand, or could not afterward recall.  Trusting that this unconsciousness was a sleep, he suffered himself to be drawn away by helping hands, and presently was himself in a bed, not knowing how he got there.

Meantime the tragedy of the wreck was being acted out.  The sling broke once, the sailor who was in it falling into the undertow, and perishing there in spite of a rush of the townspeople.  One of the two men who were washed overboard at the first shock was also drowned.  The rest escaped, including the heroic captain, who was the last to come ashore.

When Thurstane was again permitted to see Clara, it was, to his great astonishment, the morning of the following day.  He had slept like the dead; if any one had sought to awaken him, it would have been almost impossible; there was no strength left in body or spirt but for sleep.  Clara’s story had been much the same:  insensibility, then swoons, then slumber; twelve hours of utter unconsciousness.  On waking the first words of each were to ask for the other.  Thurstane put on his scarcely dried uniform and hurried to the girl’s room.  She received him at the door, for she had heard his step although it was on tiptoe, and she knew his knock although as light as the beating of a bird’s wing.