Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

.40 RAVENSHOE.
saw the officers wave their hands to one another, and then he hid
his face in his hands, and sobbed as if his heart would break.
They told him after how the end had come; she had lifted up
her bows defiantly, and brought them crashing down upon the
pitiless rock as though in despair. Then her stern had swung
round, and a merciful sea broke over her, and hid her from their
view, though-above the storm they plainly heaxd her brave old
timbers crack; then she floated off, with bulwarks gone, sinking,
and drifted out of sight round the headland, and, though they
raced across the headland, and waited a few breathless minutes
for her to float round into sight again, they never saw her any
more. The Warren Hastings had gone down in fifteen fathom.
And now there was a new passion introduced into the tragedy, to
which it had hitherto been a stranger, Hope. The wreck of
part of the mainmast and half the main-topmast, which they had
seen, before she struck, lumbering the deck, had floated off, and
there were three, four, five men clinging to the futtock shrouds;
and then, they saw the mate with the child hoist himself on to
the spar, and part his dripping hair from his eyes.
The spar had floated into the bay, into which they were looking, into much calmer water; but, directly to leeward, the swell
was tearing at the black slate rocks, and in ten minutes it would
be on them. Every man saw the danger, and Densil, running
down to the water's edge, cried, —
"Fifty pound to any one who will take'em a rope! Fifty
gold sovereigns down to-night! Who's going?"
Jim Matthews was going, and had been going before he heard
of the fifty pound, —that was evident; for he was stripped, and
out on the rocks with the rope round his waist. He stepped from
the bank of slippery seaweed into the heaving water, and then
his magnificent limbs were in full battle with the tide. A roar
announced his success. As he was seen clambering on to the
spar, a stouter rope was paid out; and very soon it and its burden
were high and dry upon the little half-moon of sand which ended
the bay.
Five sailors, the first mate, and a bright-eyed little girl were
their precious prize. The sailors lay about upon the sand, and
the mate, untying the shawl that bound her to him, put the silent and frightened child into the hands of a woman who stood
close by.
The poor little thing was trembling in every limb. "If you
please," she said to the woman, "I should like to gi to mamma.
She is standing with baby on the quarter-deck. Mr. Archer, will
you take me back to mamma, please? She will be frightened if
we stay away."
"Well, a deary me," said the honest woman, "she'11 break my