speed, hoping to arrive in time to light the
extinguished lamp before the doomed ship, whose
signal I had heard, should be lured to her fate.
For, at a glance, I had divined the heartless
scheme of the wreckers. The red light burning
alone would be taken for that on Cape Look-out,
and the captain, utterly deceived, would seek
an imaginary channel where the fatal sandbanks
lay.

Before I got home, however, flash upon flash,
boom after boom, told of the urgent danger
which the mariners had perceived when it was
too late. Each report was nearer and nearer, and
the vessel must be driving fast towards the lee
shore. I hurried to the house. Juba was asleep
and snoring in a corner of the kitchen, and the
negress was rocking herself before the fire,
crooning out some plantation ditty. Evidently
the blacks knew nothing of what had been done.
I ran up to the glazed chamber, where the lamps
stood. Hastily I relighted that which had been
extinguished, and then approached the glass, and
looked out. For a while, I saw nothing but the
flashes of the minute guns, but presently a broad
and lurid glare arose, and I could see by the
light of an enormous fire of tar-barrels and
wood, which had been hastily piled upon the
beach, that the vessel had already grounded.
She had struck, bows foremost, her upper spars
and rigging had gone overboard covering her
deck with a tangled mass of ruin, the waves
breaking furiously over her. Hard-by, I could
see a number of men, their swart figures clearly
defined in the blood-red light, bustling up and
down the sands. They had lighted the fire—the
wreckers. Without pausing to consider the
possible consequences to myself, I hurried down
the ladder, calling on Juba to follow me; and,
rushing towards the beach, hoped that I might
be in time to reach a helping hand to some of
the poor perishing creatures. When I drew
near, I heard a great shout. The vessel had
parted amidships. The whole sea, crimsom
with firelight, was covered all over with floating
beams, bales, boxes, fragments of wreck, and
struggling human forms. The latter were but
few, and their cries for help were disregarded
by the greedy wretches on shore, who rushed,
with loud shouts, waist-deep into the sea,
to secure plunder. Chests, casks, and other
prizes, were hurriedly grasped, and rolled or
dragged above the reach of the waves, while
the wreckers encouraged each other in their
unhallowed task. It was a hideous scene, but I saw
little of it, for my eye suddenly lighted on
something like a bundle of clothes, lashed to a bench
of light cane-work, which was floating in an
eddy hard-by. The white bundle stirred as it
was swept past, and the long golden hair of a
child, and the pale pretty face of a child, were
clearly visible in the crimson light. In an
instant I was standing in the foaming water,
which reached above my waist, and I had a firm
grasp on the object that had attracted my notice.
The undertow nearly bore me off my feet, and I
staggered, but I held the child fast, cut the cord
that fastened her to the bench, and bore her in
my arms to the beach. A sweet face, innocent
and beautiful, the face of a seraph! She was
wet and cold, but fear had not benumbed her
faculties, for she clung to my shoulder with one
tiny hand, while with the other she pointed to
the sea, and murmured in a weak voice,
"Mamma! Please help! Oh pray, pray save
mamma!"

Poor child! I looked on her with pity; no
doubt was in my mind that her mother had
perished in the disaster. The little girl— she
could not have been above seven years old—
pointed eagerly to a mass of wreck that turned
and twirled in the eddy as it drifted past, and
begged and prayed me passionately " to help
dear mamma."

The child was right: there was a human figure
lashed to those spars, and the long brown hair and
the streaming garments showed that the
apparently lifeless form was a woman's. I laid the
child lightly on the sandbank, telling her not to
be afraid, and, throwing off my coat, plunged into
the sea, and with great difficulty dragged the
floating mass to shore. The little raft, hastily
composed of a couple of studding-sail-booms
and a hencoop, lashed together, had drifted far
out before I reached it, and the strong current
nearly sucked me out to sea as I swam back,
panting and dripping wet; but I managed to drag
the poor lady from the waves. She was quite
insensible, her eyes were closed, and but for the
very faintest action of the heart I should have
thought life extinct. A pale delicately-moulded
face, with some resemblance to that of the
beautiful child, though the complexion and
colour of the hair were very dissimilar. The
little girl put her arms round her mother's neck,
and kissed her a hundred times.

I now began very seriously to consider
how I should get the sufferer conveyed to safe
shelter. To the wreckers I dared not appeal.
Fortunately, they had been too busy to notice
what was going on at a distance of fifty paces,
and if they had seen me at all they probably
took me for one of the gang. But I dared
not call to them for help. They wanted no
living witnesses of their misdeeds, no living
claimants of the property which they were
lawlessly appropriating.

As I swam back with my second prize, my
face had been towards the wreck, and I had
distinctly seen two human heads rise above the
broken water, and two eager gasping human
faces, and the outstretched hands of two half-
drowned men. Both were bareheaded and
drenched with salt water, but by the momentary
glimpse I caught of them I should have said
that the elder was a seaman, the other, who
wore a dark moustache, a gentleman. They
held out their hands, and cried for aid, but
none came. Only a tall man, whose face I
did not see, but whose figure was like that
of Japhet Brown, repulsed them with a boat-
hook he carried, and pushed them back into
the deep water, amid the jeers and yells of
the wretches on shore. And so they sank,
murdered for the sake of gain. I felt that my