UNCLE AND NEPHEW.

It will be well to relieve at once the anxiety which the reader must feel—­unless I have altogether failed to interest him—­in the fate of my hero, Stanislas McKay.

He was not drowned when, through the fiendish intervention of Mrs. Wilders, he fell from the deck of the Arcadia, and was, as it seemed, swallowed up in the all-devouring sea.

He went under, it is true, but only for a moment, and, coming once more to the surface, by a few strong strokes swam to a drifting spar.  To this he clung desperately, hoping against hope that he might yet be picked up from the yacht.  Unhappily for him, the waves ran so high that the boat under Trejago’s guidance failed to catch sight of him, and, as we know, returned presently to the Arcadia, after a fruitless errand, as was thought.

Very shortly the yacht and the half-submerged man parted company.  The former was steered for the open sea; the latter drifted and tossed helplessly to and fro, growing hourly weaker and more and more benumbed, but always hanging on with convulsive tenacity to the friendly timber that buoyed him up, and was his last frail chance of life.

All night long he was in the water, and when day dawned it seemed all over with him, so overpowering was his despair.  Consciousness had quite abandoned him, and he was almost at the last gasp when he was seen and picked up by a passing steamship, the Burlington Castle.

“Where am I?” he asked, faintly, on coming to himself.  He was in a snug cot, in a small but cosy cabin.

“Where you’d never have been but for the smartness of our look-out man,” said a steward at his bedside.  “Cast away, I suppose, in the gale?”

“No:  washed overboard,” replied McKay, “last evening.”

“Thunder! and in the water all those hours!  But what was your craft?  Who and what are you?”

“I was on board the yacht Arcadia.  My name is Stanislas McKay.  I am an officer of the Royal Picts—­aide-de-camp to General Wilders.  Where am I?” he repeated.

“You’ll learn that fast enough; with friends, anyhow.  Doctor said you weren’t to talk.  But just drink this, while I tell the captain you’ve come to.  He hasn’t had sight of you yet; we hauled you aboard while it was his watch below.”

Five minutes more and the captain, a jolly English tar, red in face and round in figure, came down, with a loud voice and cheering manner, to welcome his treasure-trove.

“Well, my hearty, so this is how I find you, eh?  Soused in brine.  Why, I hear they had to hang you up by the heels to let the water run out of your mouth.  Come, Stanny, my boy, this won’t do.”

“Uncle Barto!”

“The same:  master of the steamship Burlington Castle, deep in deals—­timbers for huts—­and other sundries, now lying in Balaclava, waiting to be discharged.  But, my dearest lad, you’ve had a narrow squeak.  Tell me, how did it happen, and when?”