of blown spray?  The cabin was worse awash than ever, and there was no possibility of making a fire.  Ferrier felt in his inside breast pocket.  Ah! the tin box of fusees was there—­all dry and sound inside.  He beckoned Larmor, and signed to him expressively; then he crouched under the hatch and pressed the flaming ball to the root of the rocket.  One swing, and the rushing messenger was through the curtain of drift, and away in the upper air.  Larmor clapped his poor hands and bowed graciously.  Two minutes, three minutes, five minutes they waited; no reply came.  With steadiness born of grim despair the doctor sent away another rocket.  With fiercely eager eyes he and Larmor strove to pierce the lashing mist, and then!—­oh, yes, the long crimson stream flew, wavered in the gale, and broke into scattered star-drift.  Larmor and the doctor put their arms round each other and sobbed.  Then they told poor death-like Withers, and his wan eyes flickered with the faint image of a smile.  Ferrier gave him the remainder of the wine, and the helpless seaman patted his benefactor’s hand like a pleased child.

The gale dropped as suddenly as it had risen, but it left an immense smooth sea behind, for the whole impetus of two successive breezes had set the surface water hurling along, and it mostly takes a day to smooth the tumult down.

To say that the Haughty Belle was in danger would be to put the matter mildly; the wonder was that she did not settle sooner.  The only hope was that the wind might bring the signalling vessel down before it fell away altogether.

Larmor pointed to the boat (which had remained sound for a mercy), and the doctor saw that he wanted her got ready.  He sung out to the boy, “Ask Withers to steady himself the best way he can, and you come up and tell me how to clear the boat.”  Only one of the wire ropes needed to be thrown off; then the boy squeaked shrilly, “Make the painter fast to a belaying-pin for fear a sea lifts the boat over,” and then Ferrier was satisfied.  His strength was like the strength of madness, and he felt sure that he could whirl the boat over the side himself without the aid of the falls.  His evolutions while he was working on the swashing deck were not graceful or dignified, but he was pleased with himself; the fighting spirit of Young England was roused in him, and, in spite of numbing cold, the bite of hunger, and all his bruises, he sang out cheerily, “Never mind, skipper; I’ll live to be an old salt yet.”

Only one quarter of an hour passed, and then a vessel came curtseying gracefully down.

“What’s that?” shouted Ferrier.

Larmor pointed to the questioner.

“Do you mean it’s the yacht?”

The skipper nodded.  The doctor would have fallen had he not brought all his force to bear; the strain was telling hard, and soon Lewis Ferrier’s third stage of education was too be completed.

The schooner swam swiftly on, like a pretty swan.  Ah! sure no ship come to bear the shipwrecked men to fairyland could have seemed lovelier than that good, solid yacht.  Right alongside she came, on the leeward quarter of the hulk. Four ladies were on deck.