A second wave followed, and a third, but with less peril.  She was still tossed, but as she saw that mass of water hurled upon the shore, and sweeping angrily but with broken force towards the harbour, she knew that she could thank Heaven for her escape.

She pulled towards the creek.  Already the air was clear; but as she glanced again her eye missed something familiar.  And then it struck her that the old schooner had gone.  At that instant, as if in confirmation, a shattered board bumped against the boat’s side.  She looked, and noticed that far and near the water was strewn with such fragments.

She was pausing for a second to consider, when she caught sight of a black object lying on the mud beside the shore, and with a short cry fell to rowing with all her strength.  She guided the boat as nearly up to it as the mud allowed, and then, catching up her skirts, jumped into the ooze and waded.

It was Mr. Fogo; but whether dead or alive she could not say.  Down on the mud she knelt, and, turning him gently over, looked into his face.  It was streaked with slime, and powdered with a yellowish flake, as of sand.  His locks were singed most pitifully.  She started up, took him by the shoulders, and tried to drag him up to the firmer shingle.

Mr. Fogo opened his eyes and shut them again, feebly.

“Not dead!  Oh! thank Heaven you are not dead.”

With a sob she dropped again beside him, and brushed the flaked powder from his eye-lashes.

He opened his eyes again.

“Would you mind speaking up?  I—­I think I am a little deaf.”

“I thought you were dead,” she cried, in a louder tone.

“No-o, I am not dead.  Oh! no; decidedly I am not dead.  It—­it was the Tea, I fancy.”

He added this apologetically, much as some gentlemen are wont to plead “the salmon.”

Apparently believing the explanation sufficient, he shut his eyes again, and seemed inclined to go to sleep.

“The Tea?” questioned Tamsin, chafing his hands.

“Or the Honey, perhaps—­or the Putty,” he answered drowsily.  Then, opening his eyes and sitting up with a start, “Upon my soul, I don’t know which.  It called itself Tea, but I’m—­bound—­to—­ admit—­”

He was nodding again.  Utterly perplexed, Tamsin leant back and regarded him.

“Can you walk, if you lean on my arm?”

“Walk?  Oh! yes, I can walk.  Why not?”

But it seemed that he was mistaken; for, in attempting to start, he groped about for a bit and then sat down suddenly.  Tamsin helped him to his feet.

The reader has long ago guessed the cause of the catastrophe.  It was dynamite—­conspirators’ dynamite, and therefore ill-prepared.  Now dynamite, when it explodes, acts, we are told, with “local partiality”; and of this term we may remark—­