knees would carry me, and the first thing I saw was the green light of a ship glimmering faintly as a glowworm out in the darkness abeam. I knew her to be a sailing-ship, for she showed no masthead-light, but there was not the dimmest outline to be seen of her. Her canvas threw no pallor upon the midnight wall of atmosphere. But for that fluctuating green light, showing so illusively that one needed to look a little on one side of it to catch it, the ocean would have been as bare as the heavens, so far as the sight went. One after the other the two boatmen continued to shout, 'Ship ahoy!' in hearty, roaring voices, which they sent flying through the arches of their hands; but the light went sliding on, and in a few minutes the screen in which it was hung eclipsed it, and it was all blackness again, look where one would.

There was nothing to be said about this to the men. I crept back to Helga, who had been awakened by the hoarse shouts. 'Some sailing-vessel has passed us,' said I, in answer to her inquiry, 'as we may know by the green light; but how near or far I cannot tell. Yet it is more likely than not, Helga, that but for my begging Abraham to keep a light showing, that same ship might have run us down.'

We conversed awhile about the vessel and our chances, and then her voice grew languid again with drowsiness, and she fell asleep.

Somewhile before dawn the rain ceased, the sky brightened, and here and there a star showed. I had been out overhanging the gunwale with Abraham, and listening to him as he talked about his mate Thomas, and how the children were to manage now that the poor fellow was taken, when the gray of the dawn rose floating into the sky off the black rim of the sea.

In a short time the daylight was abroad, with the pink of the coming sun swiftly growing in glory among the clouds in the east. Jacob sat sleeping in the bottom of the boat, squatting Lascar fashion--a huddle of coat and angular knees and bowed head. I got upon a thwart and sent a long thirsty look round. 'By Heaven, Abraham!' I cried, '_nothing_ in sight, as I live to say it! What, in the name of hope, has come to the sea?'

'We're agoing to have a fine day, I'm thankful to say,' he answered, turning up his eyes. 'But, Lord! what a wreck the lugger looks!'

The poor fellow was as haggard as though he had risen from a sick-bed, and this sudden gauntness or elongation of countenance was not a little heightened by a small powdering of the crystals of salt lying white under the hollow of 

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