“Haul easy,” came the order.  Hans and Tom pulled in the line slowly until the boat’s bow was leading almost directly beneath the ship’s stern.  A bridle was rigged from the spanker boom and made fast to a life buoy.  Then the lady who had appeared at the taffrail was slung in it rather uncomfortably and carefully lowered away.  She was seized by one of the men forward, and handed aft to me.

The woman was quite young.  She was slightly built, and I supported her easily until she was safely in the stern sheets.  A few strands of curly blond hair blew across my face, and gave me a most peculiar feeling as I brushed them aside.  Then she turned up her face, and I saw that she had most beautiful eyes, soft and gentle, with a trusting look, such as one sees in children.

“Thank you, Mr. Sailorman,” she said, with a smile.  “I’m all right now.”

“Except, perhaps, for a little wetting, you will stay so, I hope,” I answered.

A heavy woman was being lowered away, and Hans caught her boldly around the body, trying to keep her from being thrown out of the tossing small boat.  She shrieked dismally.

“Don’t be silly, mamma,” cried the young lady aft.  “You’ve been squeezed tighter than that before, I am sure.”

She was passed aft and took her place beside her daughter in the stern, expostulating incoherently at the younger one’s insinuations.

Then followed a little man, short and stout, who was evidently the ship’s carpenter, and he was followed by a dozen sailors.

“Haven’t you any boats that will swim?” I asked of the mate, who hung over the rail above me.

“We’re getting them out now,” he answered.

“Then let us go.  We’ve got a big enough load already.”

In a few moments we were on our way back to the Pirate, making good headway before the wind and sea, and shipping little water.

The men explained as we went along that the Sovereign had started a butt during the gale, and she was full of water by this time.  They had kept at the pumps all day, but had given it up when they saw we were coming for them.  The ship’s cargo of oil and light woods from the peninsula had kept her from going to the bottom.  She was homeward bound to Liverpool, and it was the captain’s wife and daughter we were bringing aboard.  The hurricane had caught them aback and dismasted them during the night, and after six hours of plunging helplessly into the sea without anything but the mainmast and stump of the foremast above the deck, she had sprung a leak and filled rapidly.  The maintopsail they had bent in the morning after extraordinary exertion, and with this they had managed to keep her partly under control.

“She will never go to the bottom with all the soft wood she has in her,” said a sailor who was old and grizzled and had the bearing of a man-of-war’s man.  “She can’t sink for months.  The water is up to her lower deck already.”