In the midst of this agitation and terror, suddenly the boat was hailed.  They all looked up, and there was the lateen coming tearing down on them under all her canvas, both her broad sails spread out to the full, one on each side.  She seemed all monstrous wing.  The lugger being now nearly head to wind, she came flying down on her weather bow as if to run past her, then, lowering her foresail, made a broad sweep, and brought up suddenly between the lugger and the wind.  As her foresail fell, a sailor bounded over it on to the forecastle, and stood there with one foot on the gunwale, active as Mercury, eye glowing, and a rope in his hand.

“Stand by to lower your mast,” roared this sailor in a voice of thunder to the boatman of the lugger; and the moment the schooner came up into the wind athwart the lugger’s bows he bounded over ten feet of water into her, and with a turn of the hand made the rope fast to her thwart, then hauling upon it, brought her alongside with her head literally under the schooner’s wing.

He and the old boatman then instantly unstepped the mast and laid it down in the boat, sail and all.  It was not his great strength that enabled them to do this (a dozen of him could not have done it while the wind pressed on the mast); it was his address in taking all the wind out of the lug by means of the schooner’s mainsail.  The old man never said a word till the work was done; then he remarked, “That was clever of you.”

The new-comer took no notice whatever.  “Reef that sail, Jack,” he cried; “it will be in the lady’s face by and by; and heave your bailer in here; their boat is full of water.”

“Not so full as it would if you hadn’t brought up alongside,” said the old boatman.

“Do you want to frighten the lady?” replied the sailor, in his driest and least courtier-like way.

“I am not frightened, Mr. Dodd,” said Lucy.  “I was, but I am not now.”

“Come and help me get the water out of her, Jack.  Stay!  Miss Fountain had better step into the dry boat, meantime.  Now, Jack, look alive; lash her longside aft.”

This done, the two sailors, one standing on the lugger’s gunwale, one on the schooner’s, handed Miss Fountain into the schooner, and gave her the cushions of the lugger to sit upon.  They then went to work with a will, and bailed half a ton of water out.

When she was dry David jumped back into his own boat.  “Now, Miss Fountain, your boat is dry, but the sea is getting up, and I think, if I were you, I would stay where you are.”

“I mean to,” said the lady, calmly.  “Mr. Talboys, would you mind coming into this boat?  We shall be safer here; it—­it is larger.”

The gentleman thus addressed was embarrassed between two mortifications, one on each side him.  If he came into David’s boat he would be second fiddle, he who had gone out of port first fiddle.  If he stuck to the lugger Lucy would go off with Dodd, and he would look like a fool coming ashore without her.  He hesitated.