parallel between past and present was complete. What the cabin had been in the time of the fathers, that the cabin was now in the time of the sons.
Allan pushed the door to again with his foot, a little surprised at the sudden silence which appeared to have fallen on his friend from the moment when he had laid his hand on the cabin lock. When he turned to look, the reason of the silence was instantly revealed. Midwinter had dropped on the deck. He lay senseless before the cabin door; his face turned up, white and still, to the moonlight, like the face of a dead man.
In a moment Allan was at his side. He looked uselessly round the lonely limits of the wreck, as he lifted Midwinter's head on his knee, for a chance of help, where all chance was ruthlessly cut off. 'What am I to do?' he said to himself, in the first impulse of alarm. 'Not a drop of water near, but the foul water in the cabin.' A sudden recollection crossed his memory, the florid color rushed back over his face, and he drew from his pocket a wicker- covered flask. 'God bless the doctor for giving me this before we sailed!' he broke out, fervently, as he poured down Midwinter's throat some drops of the raw whisky which the flask contained. The stimulant acted instantly on the sensitive system of the swooning man. He sighed faintly, and slowly opened his eyes. 'Have I been dreaming?' he asked, looking up vacantly in Allan's face. His eyes wandered higher, and encountered the dismantled masts of the wreck rising weird and black against the night sky. He shuddered at the sight of them, and hid his face on Allan's knee. 'No dream!' he murmured to himself, mournfully. 'Oh me, no dream!'
'You have been overtired all day,' said Allan, 'and this infernal adventure of ours has upset you. Take some more whisky, it's sure to do you good. Can you sit by yourself, if I put you against the bulwark, so?'
'Why by myself? Why do you leave me?' asked Midwinter.
Allan pointed to the mizzen shrouds of the wreck, which were still left standing. 'You are not well enough to rough it here till the workmen come off in the morning,' he said. 'We must find our way on shore at once, if we can. I am going up to get a good view all round, and see if there's a house within hail of us.'
Even in the moment that passed while those few words were spoken, Midwinter's eyes wandered back distrustfully to the fatal cabin door. 'Don't go near it!' he whispered. 'Don't try to open it, for God's sake!'
'No, no,' returned Allan, humoring him. 'When I come down from the rigging, I'll come back here.' He said the words a little constrainedly, noticing, for the first time while he now spoke, an underlying distress in Midwinter's face, which grieved and perplexed him. 'You're not angry with me?' he said, in his simple, sweet-tempered way. 'All this is my fault, I know; and I was a brute and a fool to laugh at you, when I ought to have seen you were ill. I am so sorry, Midwinter. Don't be angry with me!'
Midwinter slowly raised his head. His eyes rested with a mournful interest, long and tender, on Allan's anxious face.
'Angry?' he repeated, in his lowest, gentlest tones. 'Angry with
Allan turned away quickly, convinced that his mind had not yet recovered the shock of the fainting fit. 'Don't forget the whisky!' he said, cheerfully, as he sprang into the rigging, and mounted to the mizzen-top.
It was past two, the moon was waning, and the darkness that comes before dawn was beginning to gather round the wreck. Behind Allan, as he now stood looking out from the elevation of the mizzen-top, spread the broad and lonely sea. Before him were the low, black, lurking rocks, and the broken waters of the channel, pouring white and angry into the vast calm of the westward ocean beyond. On the right hand, heaved back grandly from the water-side, were the rocks and precipices, with their little table-lands of grass between; the sloping downs, and upward-rolling heath solitudes of the Isle of Man. On the left hand rose the craggy sides of the Islet of the Calf, here rent wildly into deep black chasms, there lying low under long sweeping acclivities of grass and heath. No sound rose, no light was visible, on either shore. The black lines of the topmost masts of the wreck looked shadowy and faint in the darkening mystery of the sky; the land breeze had dropped; the small shoreward waves fell noiseless: far or near, no sound was audible but the cheerless bubbling of the broken water ahead, pouring through the awful hush of silence in which earth and ocean waited for the coming day.
Even Allan's careless nature felt the solemn influence of the time. The sound of his own voice startled him when he looked down and hailed his friend on deck.
'I think I see one house,' he said. 'Here-away, on the mainland to the right.' He looked again, to make sure, at a dim little patch of white, with faint white lines behind it, nestling low in a grassy hollow, on the main island. 'It looks like a stone house and inclosure,' he resumed. 'I'll hail it, on the chance.' He passed his arm round a rope to steady himself, made a speaking-trumpet of his hands, and suddenly dropped them again without uttering a sound. 'It's so awfully quiet,' he whispered to himself. 'I'm half afraid to call out.' He looked down again on deck. 'I shan't startle you, Midwinter, shall I?' he said, with an uneasy laugh. He looked once more at the faint white object, in the grassy hollow. 'It won't do to have come up here for nothing,' he thought, and made a speaking-trumpet of his hands again. This time he gave the hail with the whole power of his lungs. 'On shore there!' he shouted, turning his face to the main island. 'Ahoy-hoy-hoy!'
The last echoes of his voice died away and were lost. No sound answered him but the cheerless bubbling of the broken water ahead.
He looked down again at his friend, and saw the dark figure of Midwinter rise erect, and pace the deck backward and forward, never disappearing out of sight of the cabin when it retired toward the bows of the wreck, and never passing beyond the cabin when it returned toward the stern. 'He is impatient to get away,' thought Allan; 'I'll try again.' He hailed the land once more, and, taught by previous experience, pitched his voice in its highest key.
This time another sound than the sound of the bubbling water answered him. The lowing of frightened cattle rose from the building in the grassy hollow, and traveled far and drearily through the stillness of the morning air. Allan waited and listened. If the building was a farmhouse the disturbance among the beasts would rouse the men. If it was only a cattle-stable, nothing more would happen. The lowing of the frightened brutes rose and fell drearily, the minutes passed, and nothing happened.
'Once more!' said Allan, looking down at the restless figure pacing beneath him. For the third time he hailed the land. For the third time he waited and listened.
In a pause of silence among the cattle, he heard behind him, on the opposite shore of the channel, faint and far among the solitudes of the Islet of the Calf, a sharp, sudden sound, like the distant clash of a heavy door-bolt drawn back. Turning at once in the new direction, he strained his eyes to look for a house. The last faint rays of the waning moonlight trembled here and there on the higher rocks, and on the steeper pinnacles of ground, but great strips of darkness lay dense and black over all the land between; and in that darkness the house, if house there were, was lost to view.
