in the faith that one born with a caul could not drown, was perhaps the first to regain his senses. When he swept the water from his eyes he looked for the Stella; but that unfortunate little vessel had only been driven still more tightly into the jaws of the reef, though a great gap showed to starboard amidships. She was breaking in two.
"God be thanked for that, at any rate!" he muttered.
The concession was due to the strong commonsense of a Breton, which told him that signs and portents would prove of no avail against instant death if the Stella had rolled over. Then, having ascertained that his own people were safe, he looked for the colossus he had last seen clutching the ropes. The ropes were there; but man and woman had vanished. Something bobbed up among the spume and foam close to the Hirondelle's side. He leaned over and grabbed a huge arm. With one powerful tug he drew a body half out of the water. It was the man; but the woman had been reft from his close embrace at the moment when some chance of safety seemed to have come most surely within reach. His sou'wester cap had been wrenched off, and, even when hauling the limp body on board, Peridot knew that his quickness of eye and hand would avail naught.
He held a corpse in his grasp. The top of the unfortunate man's skull was visibly flattened, and the gray hair was already darkened by an ominous dye. In all likelihood the wave struck him when least prepared, tore his fingers from the ropes, and dashed him head foremost against the Hirondelle's timbers.
Peridot was no sentimentalist. He did not waste a needless sigh over the fate of one when the lives of many were trembling in the balance. Even when he was placing the body at Yvonne's feet, where it would be out of the way for the time, he peered up at her with a grim smile.
"Two gone, Ma'mselle," he said; "but with the help of the Madonna we'll save the rest!"
A shriek from the girl's lips, and an expression of terror in her eyes which assuredly was not there after the gallant Hirondelle had thrown off her mightiest and most vindictive assailant, told him that some worse tragedy was imminent. He turned, and saw Tollemache leaping into the frothing vortex that raged between the stern of the boat and the nearest rock. The Breton guessed instantly that the young American had seen the drowning woman. Leaving the Stella momentarily in charge of Ingersoll and Yvonne, he raced aft, and seized the sweep that Tollemache had dropped. Simultaneously his friend's head rose above the maelstrom; for the cork jacket bore Lorry bravely. He was clasping the woman's apparently lifeless form with one hand, and battling against the sea with the other when the long oar was thrust within reach, and he too was drawn to the side.
Meanwhile Ingersoll, exercising splendid self control, had not deserted his post. After the heavy backwash caused by the tidal wave, a sea had curled in from the open to fill the inlet again, and the Hirondelle was carried so near the reef that the stout oar bent under the strain of fending her off, and might conceivably have snapped had not some assistance been given by the ropes attached to the Stella. Another and more normal backwash came in the nick of time, and the boat retreated to her earlier position. Now, if the Fates were aught but merciless, there might be a breathing space.
Peridot's gray-green eyes sparkled as they met Tollemache's brown eyes, gazing up steadily from the swirl of waters.
"You all right?" he said, seizing the woman's arms.
"Why not?" said Tollemache. "Lift her aboard. Don't bother about me."
Ere Peridot had laid the dead or unconscious woman by the side of the man who had already given his life for her sake, Tollemache was on deck again, and lending a hand to the first sailor to cross by the ropes. The survivors followed rapidly, and the last to leave the Stella was her captain.
Ten men were rescued, – five sailors, including the master, two stokers, an engineer, a steward, and a passenger. The two last were in the saloon when the vessel struck, and had crawled on deck as best they could, the passenger having sustained a broken arm, and the steward a sprained ankle.
It was obvious, from the measures taken to safeguard the injured pair, that they were in urgent need of attention; but Peridot knew that the lives of all still trembled in the balance. So he bawled to Tollemache:
"Get the lady below, and as many of the others as you can pack in. During the next few minutes I want none but sailors on deck. Gars! Be quick about it too! No, don't trouble about that poor fellow. He's gone!"
Already he had cast off the ropes that formed the precarious bridge. Tollemache told the shipwrecked crew what the Breton had said, and they obeyed with the readiness of men who were aware of the paramount necessity of prompt action.
The Stella's captain had already summed up the new problem facing the Hirondelle, and issued his orders with decision. He and a sturdy deckhand helped Tollemache and Ingersoll with the sweeps, which were now to be used as oars, while the others carried the woman to the cabin, and helped their disabled shipmates to make the descent.
Yvonne, though unwilling to leave the deck until the next ordeal was ended, felt that she ought to sacrifice her own wishes to the need of a sister in distress; but Peridot settled the matter by bidding her take the tiller.
"We can't get back to the inside passage on this wind. If we tried it, Les Verrés would catch us," he said. "We'll forge out a bit with the sweeps. When clear of the yacht we'll be just clear of the reef too. When you see me begin to haul at the sail put the helm hard over for the seaward tack. We're going outside. You understand?"
"Perfectly," she said.
She ran between the four men laboring at the oars, well pleased to have a task that would absorb her mind to the exclusion of all else, and profoundly relieved because it took her away from the vicinity of the dead body. Even as the Stella's company were climbing on board she could not avoid an occasional glance at the huge and inert form at her feet. It was a dreadful thing to see the soul battered out of such a magnificent frame in such a way. Never before had she set eyes on a man of similar proportions. He was inches over six feet in height, and stout withal, so that he completely dwarfed the tall and sinewy frame of Laurence Tollemache, who hitherto had loomed as a giant among undersized Frenchmen. Oilskins and heavy sea boots added to the dead man's apparent bulk. His face, which wore a singularly placid expression, was well modeled. In youth he must have been extremely good looking; in middle age – apparently he was over fifty – he still retained clear-cut features, and strands of a plentiful crop of iron-gray hair dropped over a broad and high forehead.
The woman whom he had declined to intrust to the care of any but himself was probably his wife. Was she dead too? Yvonne wondered. It was almost equally certain that the yacht was theirs; though perhaps they might have hired it for a winter cruise in the Mediterranean by way of the Spanish coast.
These thoughts flitted through the girl's brain as she followed the last phases of the rescue. Now that her hand was on the tiller, and the open sea began to show beyond the yacht's bowsprit, her mind was occupied by the one remaining hazard to the exclusion of all else. She had every confidence in Peridot's seamanship, having been out with him many a time in weather that, if not quite so threatening as this, offered sufficient test of skill and nerve. But she knew well that once the full force of the tide was felt the oars would be useless, chiefly owing to their unwieldy length, and the doubt remained whether the Hirondelle would gain enough way to win out close hauled into deep water.
Still her heart leaped with high courage as her eyes took in the bold and striking picture presented by the deck of the fishing boat during that brief transit through broken seas. In the immediate foreground a small hatchway framed the weather-tanned faces of two men lodged in the companionway so as to avoid overcrowding the cabin. Behind were her father and the yacht's Captain at one oar, and Tollemache and a sailor at the other, pulling with the short, jerky, but powerful stroke alone possible in the conditions. Ingersoll's sallow, well marked, intellectual features were in sharp contrast with
