tively narrow channels, winding between salt-marshes. The black, saline mud of these marshes emitted a pungent smell, as the waves washed along the banks; while the long grass, which thickly covered their surface, whistled or rattled in the gale. Occasionally, a gull was seen, screaming aloft, in spite of the storm, now swept swiftly down the wind, and now slowly battling his way up against the tempest.

"There it is," suddenly cried one of the crew, and, as he spoke, he pointed across the beach, along whose inner side the boat was now coasting.

They were opposite where, at its narrowest part, sea. and bay approached within a few hundred yards of each other; and, following the direction of the man's finger, Major Gordon saw a large ship, lying some distance from the shore, with her masts gone and apparently deserted.

She lay, careened towards the south, at a right angle to the coast, so that nearly every wave swept her for the entire length of her decks. At first, as we have said, she seemed deserted. But, looking more closely, Major Gordon discovered, under the lee of her weather side, and sheltered by the high stern, two female figures, attended by a solitary companion of the other sex.

"Luff, luff," he cried to Mullen, who was steering. "She'll lay close alongside the bank, won't she? Let go everything with a run.”

In a moment the craft rasped against the steep mud bank, and in another Major Gordon had leaped ashore, and was moving towards the surf, leaving the others to follow more at leisure.

Ar this sight, the three persons on the wreck, who, when first seen, had seemed as inanimate as stone, started up, and while the females clasped their hands, their companion began to wave a handkerchief as a signal.

In a lull of the gale, Major Gordon shouted to them, making an impromptu speaking-trumpet of his hands. Only a faint sound, however, came back, proving that the strangers had replied; its purport was undistinguishable.

"They can't hear a word you say," remarked Mullen, coming up. "But they saw you were speaking to them, by your actions. If we can't hear them," he pertinently added, "with the wind towards us, how can they hear us ?"

"Hark!" answered Major Gordon, "I thought I made out a word or two then. Didn't he say that all on board were lost except themselves?"

"Likely enough. But see, he's got a speaking-trumpet." As he spoke, Captain Powell raised that instrument to his mouth, and shouted, in broken intervals, that all on board had been lost except three; that they had no boats, nor anybody to man them if they had; and that the ladies

could never reach shore alive, if they jumped overboard, even lashed to a spar. He concluded by saying

'Haven't you a whale-boat?"

Again Major Gordon attempted to make himself audible. But though he shouted again and again, and with a Stentor's voice, it was evident that his accents were not heard on the wreck. Two or three of the others made a similar essay, but with no better success.

"We can't hear a word," shouted Captain Powell. "The ship won't hold together much longer. Get a whale-boat, for the love of God, or we are lost."

"Alas!" said Major Gordon, turning to Mullen, "there's no such thing within ten miles-is there ?"

"No," interrupted Mullen, shaking his head.

"But something must be done. I think a strong man might swim out to the wreck with a rope."

"Swim out with a rope !"

"Yes!"

"What good would that do?"

"If," replied the Major, "we had a line out to the ship, it might be used to draw a cable from her ashore; and if there was a cable hauled taut, I'm sure I could rig a sort of sliding hammock, by which to land the ladies: for the hammock could be made to travel to and fro by lines attached to either end."

Mullen regarded the speaker in mute admiration for a full minute before he spoke.

"I always said," he replied, at last, "that it was everything to be a scollard. Now I might have puzzled over this matter for a week, yet never have thought of such a way as that. It would do, sartainly, if we only had the line out."

"If I had a mortar here, and tools, I could fix it so as to throw a line over the wreck at once."

"A musket wouldn't do," said Mullen, musingly; "even

I've a capital

one with so big a bore as a 'Queen Anne.'

one in the boat.”

"It couldn't throw a line strong enough.

The strain of

the cable, when the latter came to be dragged through the water, would snap it immediately."

"More's the pity," answered Mullen, as if reluctantly abandoning a scheme, which he would have liked to have seen tried for its novelty, at least, "for I see we'll have to give the thing up."

"Give it up!" cried the Major.

"Yes!"

"Can't a man swim off, as I proposed ?"

Mullen shook his head.

"I'm not so sure," stoutly said Major Gordon. "It would be tempting death."

The men had been eagerly listening to this conversation. The scheme of Major Gordon, to judge by the expression of their faces, had filled them with not less admiration than it had Mullen. The Major now turned to each countenance in succession, to see if any listener thought more favorably than Mullen of the feasibility of swimming off with a line. But the scrutiny was in vain.

"Think of the women," he said, addressing the group, and hoping yet to move some one. "Have you no wives or daughters? Have none of you mothers? There is one lady there whose gray hairs ought to remind you of a mother. Would you stand idly here if your own was in such extremity? Have none of you sisters? That young, delicate-looking creature there should appeal to your hearts."

As he spoke, he pointed vehemently to the wreck; but no one moved. Suddenly, he began to disencumber himself of his superfluous clothing.

"I, at least," he said, "will not see them perish without an effort to save them. A strong man, I am sure, might swim out, by taking advantage of the breakers. He can't

run any great risk, either; for, if he fails, he can be drawn ashore again by the rope. Run, some one, to the boat, and bring the halyards. I will tie one end about my waist; the other can be held fast here; if we splice it, we can make it long enough."

By this time he had thrown off his coat and waistcoat, and was proceeding to disencumber himself of his boots, when suddenly one of the men spoke up. It was Newell, the one whom Mullen had asked to volunteer. He was a youth about nineteen, powerfully built, and deep-chested like a bull, who had been watching his leader and listening to his words, with a face whose agitated working showed the tumult in his heart. His honest nature could now endure it no longer.

"Stop that," he cried, stepping forward, and laying his hand on Major Gordon's arm. "You're not agoing. I say, you're not agoing, sir," he added, determinedly, "for I'm going myself." And he began doggedly to strip at the words. "I'm the best swimmer here, and therefore the properest man to undertake the job. I can do it, when you'd drown."

"But-" began Major Gordon.

"Look here, Major," interposed the youth, fiercely. "Don't you think other men's got feelings as well as you? Don't you 'spose I can pity 'em," and he jerked his finger over his shoulder in the direction of the wreck, "as much as some others? I only waited till I saw you were in real earnest; for it's more than an even chance the man drowns that tries it, and that's enough to make any one hold back a bit; but since you're fixed to go, I'll go instead.”

'I have a right to throw away my own life, but not to ask you to throw away yours," said Major Gordon, putting his hand on the youth, as if to stop his further disrobing "No, I shall go."

The youth looked fiercely on the speaker, as if he would.