Hilda watched our rescuers with parted lips and agonised eyes.  Then she felt Sebastian’s pulse.  “Thank Heaven,” she cried, “he still lives!  They will be here before he is quite past confession.”

Sebastian opened his eyes dreamily.  “A boat?” he asked.

“Yes, a boat!”

“Then you have gained your point, child.  I am able to collect myself.  Give me a few hours’ more life, and what I can do to make amends to you shall be done.”

I don’t know why, but it seemed longer between the time when the boat was lowered and the moment when it reached us than it had seemed during the three days and nights we lay tossing about helplessly on the open Atlantic.  There were times when we could hardly believe it was really moving.  At last, however, it reached us, and we saw the kindly faces and outstretched hands of our rescuers.  Hilda clung to Sebastian with a wild clasp as the men reached out for her.

“No, take him first!” she cried, when the sailors, after the custom of men, tried to help her into the gig before attempting to save us; “his life is worth more to me than my own.  Take him—­and for God’s sake lift him gently, for he is nearly gone!”

They took him aboard and laid him down in the stern.  Then, and then only, Hilda stepped into the boat, and I staggered after her.  The officer in charge, a kind young Irishman, had had the foresight to bring brandy and a little beef essence.  We ate and drank what we dared as they rowed us back to the steamer.  Sebastian lay back, with his white eyelashes closed over the lids, and the livid hue of death upon his emaciated cheeks; but he drank a teaspoonful or two of brandy, and swallowed the beef essence with which Hilda fed him.

“Your father is the most exhausted of the party,” the officer said, in a low undertone.  “Poor fellow, he is too old for such adventures.  He seems to have hardly a spark of life left in him.”

Hilda shuddered with evident horror.  “He is not my father—­thank Heaven!” she cried, leaning over him and supporting his drooping head, in spite of her own fatigue and the cold that chilled our very bones.  “But I think he will live.  I mean him to live.  He is my best friend now—­and my bitterest enemy!”

The officer looked at her in surprise, and then touched his forehead, inquiringly, with a quick glance at me.  He evidently thought cold and hunger had affected her reason.  I shook my head.  “It is a peculiar case,” I whispered.  “What the lady says is right.  Everything depends for us upon our keeping him alive till we reach England.”