Lewis slipped up on deck and signed for Larmor.

“Our man wants to pray.  Don’t you think we may all meet?  You can do nothing more than let the vessel drift.  Leave one hand here ready to show a flare, and come down.”  “I don’t much understand it, sir; but Bob and me will come.”

Then, knee deep in water, the forlorn little company prayed together.  I do not care to report such things—­it verges on vulgarism; but I will tell you a word or two that came from the maimed man.  “O Lord, give me a chance if you see fit; but let me go if any one is to go, and save my commerades.  I’ve been a bad ’un, and I haven’t no right to ask nothing.  Save the others, and, if I have no chance in this world of a better life, give me a look in before you take me.”

Who could smile at the gruff, innocent familiarity?  A very great poet has said, “Consort much with powerful uneducated persons.”  Fellows like Withers make one believe this.

The prayer was not, perhaps, intelligent; but He who searches the hearts would rightly appraise those words, “I’ve been a bad ’un.”  Ferrier felt lightened, and he shook hands with Larmor before they once more faced the war of the night.

The fire was out, it was bitter chill, yet hope was left—–­ a faint sparkle—­but still a stay for the soul of the tempest-tossed men.  The climax of the breeze seemed approaching at four o’clock; and, as Larmor said, “it couldn’t he very much worse.”  The skipper was then hanging as he best could to the mizen rigging; Lewis had his arms tightly locked on the port side round the futtock shrouds, and was cowering to get clear of the scourging wind.  There was a wild shriek forward.

“Water, skipper!”

Lewis looked up.  There it was, as high as the mast-head, compact as a wall, and charging with the level velocity of a horse regiment.  The doctor closed his eyes and thought, “Now for the grand secret.”  Then came the immense pressure—­the convulsive straining, the failing light, the noise in the ears.  First the young man found himself crushed under some strangling incubus; then, with a shrieking gasp, he was in the upper air.  But he was under a hamper of ropes that strung him down as if he were in a coop, and his dulled senses failed for a moment to tell what ailed him.  At last, after seconds that seemed like ages, it dawned on him; the masts had snapped like carrots, both were over the side, and the hulk was only a half-sunken plaything for the seas to hurl hither and thither.  Larmor?  Gone!  How long?  These things chased each other through his dim mind; he slipped his arm out and crept clear; then a perception struck him with the force of a material thing; a return wave leaped up with a slow, spent lunge on the starboard side, and a black something—­wreckage?  No.  A shudder of the torn nerves told the young man what it was.  He slid desperately over and made his clutch; the great backwash seemed as though it would tear his arm out of the socket, but he hung on, and presently a lucky lift enabled him to haul Larmor on board!  All this passed in a few lying instants, but centuries—–­ aeons—­could not count its length in the anguish-stricken human soul.