“You will not have the cruelty to abandon me on this naked rock, Captain Spike, and that without a morsel of food, or a drop of water.”

“Wather is a blessed thing!” exclaimed Biddy.  “Do not think of lavin’ the gentleman widout wather.”

“You left me, sir, without food or water, and you can fit out your own rock—­yes, d—­e, sir, you left me under fire, and that is a thing no true-hearted man would have thought of.  Stand by to make sail, boys; and if he offer to enter the boat, pitch him out with the boat-hooks.”

Spike was getting angry, and he entered the boat again, without perceiving that Rose had left it.  Light of foot, and resolute of spirit, the beautiful girl, handsomer than ever perhaps, by her excited feelings and dishevelled hair, had sprung on the rock, as Spike stepped into the boat forward, and when the latter turned round, after loosening the sail, he found he was drifting away from the very being who was the object of all his efforts.  Mulford, believing that Rose was to be abandoned as well as himself, received the noble girl in his arms, though ready to implore Spike, on his knees, to return and at least to take her off.  But Spike wanted no solicitation on that point.  He returned of his own accord, and had just reached the rock again when a report of a gun drew all eyes toward the brig.

The Swash had again run out of the passage, and was beating up, close to the reef as she dared to go, with a signal flying.  All the seamen at once understood the cause of this hint.  The strange sail was getting too near, and everybody could see that it was the sloop-of-war.  Spike looked at Rose, a moment, in doubt.  But Mulford raised his beloved in his arms, and carried her to the side of the rock, stepping on board the boat.

Spike watched the movements of the young man with jealous vigilance, and no sooner was Rose placed on her seat, than he motioned significantly to the mate to quit the boat.

“I cannot and will not voluntarily, Captain Spike,” answered Harry, calmly.  “It would be committing a sort of suicide.”

A sign brought two of the men to the captain’s assistance.  While the latter held Rose in her place, the sailors shoved Harry on the rock again.  Had Mulford been disposed to resist, these two men could not very easily have ejected him from the boat, if they could have done it at all; but he knew there were others in reserve, and feared that blood might be shed, in the irritated state of Spike, in the presence of Rose.  While, therefore, he would not be accessary to his own destruction, he would not engage in what he knew would prove not only a most harassing, but a bootless resistance.  The consequence was that the boats proceeded, leaving him alone on the rock.

It was perhaps fortunate for Rose that she fainted.  Her condition occupied her aunt and Biddy, and Spike was enabled to reach his brig without any further interruption.  Rose was taken on board still nearly insensible, while her two female companions were so much confused and distressed, that neither could have given a reasonably clear account of what had just occurred.  Not so with Jack Tier, however.  That singular being noted all that passed, seated in the eyes of the boat, away from the confusion that prevailed in its stern-sheets, and apparently undisturbed by it.