"Save him!" shrieked she again, as twenty men rushed forward and stopped short.

The

man was fully thirty yards from them; but close to him, between them and him, stretched a long ghastly crack, some ten feet wide, cutting the point across. All knew it its slippery edge, its polished upright sides, the seething caldrons within it; and knew, too, that the next wave would boil up from it in a hundred jets, and suck in the strongest to his doom, to fall, with brains dashed out, into a chasm from which was no return.

Ere they could nerve themselves for action, the wave had come. Up the slope it went, one-half of it burying the wretched mariner, and fell over into the chasm. The other half rushed up the chasm itself, and spouted forth again to the moonlight in columns of snow, in time to meet the wave from which it had just parted, as it fell from above; and then the two boiled up, and round, and over, and swirled along the smooth rock to their very feet.

The schoolmistress took one long look; and as the wave retired, rushed after it to the very brink of the chasm, and flung herself on her knees.

"She's mazed!"

"No, she's not!" almost screamed old Willis, in mingled pride and terror, as he rushed after her. "The wave has carried him across the crack, and she's got him!" And he sprang upon her, and caught her round the waist.

"Now, if you be men!" shouted he, as the rest hurried down.

"Now, if you be men; comes!" shouted big Jan.

before the next wave "Hands together, and

make a line!" And he took a grip with one

hand of the old man's waistband, and held out the other for who would to seize.

Who took it? Frank Headley, the curate, who had been watching all sadly apart, longing to do something which no one could mistake.

"Be you man enough?" asked big Jan, doubtfully.

"Try," said Frank.

"Really, you ben't, sir," said Jan, civilly enough. "Means no offence, sir; your heart's stout enough, I see; but you don't know what it'll be." And he caught the hand of a huge fellow next him, while Frank shrank sadly back into the darkness.

Strong hand after hand was clasped, and strong knee after knee dropped almost to the rock, to meet the coming rush of water; and all who knew their business took a long breath, they might have need of one.

It came, and surged over the man, and the girl, and up to old Willis's throat, and round the knees of Jan and his neighbor; and then followed the returning out-draught, and every limb quivered with the strain; but when the cataract had disappeared, the chain was still unbroken.

"Saved!" and a cheer broke from all lips, save those of the girl herself; she was as senseless as he whom she had saved. They hurried her and him up the rock ere another wave could come; but they had much ado to open her hands, so firmly clenched together were they round his waist.

Gently they lifted each, and laid them on the rock; while old Willis, having recovered his breath, set to work crying like a child, to restore breath to "his maiden."

"Run for Dr. Heale, some good Christian!"

But Frank, longing to escape from a company who did not love him, and to be of some use ere the night was out, was already half-way to the village on that very errand.

However, ere the doctor could be stirred out of his boozy slumbers, and thrust into his clothes by his wife, the schoolmistress was safe in bed at her mother's house; and the man, weak, but alive, carried triumphantly up to Heale's door; which having been kicked open, the sailors insisted in carrying him right upstairs, and depositing him on the best spare bed.

"If you won't come to your patients, doctor, your patients shall come to you. Why were you asleep in your liquors, instead of looking out for poor wratches, like a Christian? You see whether his bones be broke, and gi' un his medicines proper; and then go and see after the schoolmistress; she'm worth a dozen of any man, and a thousand of you! We'll pay for un like men; and if you don't, we 'll break every bottle in your shop."

To which, what between bodily fear and real good-nature, old Heale assented; and so ended that eventful night.

A

CHAPTER IV

FLOTSAM, JETSAM, AND LIGAN

BOUT nine o'clock the next morning, Gentleman Jan strolled into Dr. Heale's surgery, pipe in mouth, with an attendant satellite; for every lion, poor as well as rich, in country as in town, must needs have his jackal.

Heale's surgery-or, in plain English, shopwas a doleful hole enough; in such dirt and confusion as might be expected from a drunken occupant, with a practice which was only not decaying because there was no rival in the field. But monopoly made the old man, as it makes most men, all the more lazy and careless; and there was not a drug on his shelves which could be warranted to work the effect set forth in that sanguine and too trustful book, the "Pharmacopoeia," which, like Mr. Pecksniff's England, expects every man to do his duty, and is, accordingly (as the "Lancet" and Dr. Letheby know too well), grievously disappointed.

In this kennel of evil savors Heale was slowly trying to poke things into something like order; and dragging out a few old drugs with a shaky hand, to see if any one would buy them, in a vague expectation that something must needs have happened to somebody the night before, which would require somewhat of his art.

And he was not disappointed. Gentleman Jan, without taking his pipe out of his mouth, dropped his huge elbows on the counter, and his blackfringed chin on his fists; took a look round the shop, as if to find something which would suit him; and then:

"I say, doctor, gi' 's some tackleum."

"Some diachylum plaster, Mr. Beer?" says Heale, meekly. "What for, then?"

"To tackle my shins. I barked 'em cruel against King Arthur's nose last night. Hard in the bone he is; I wish I was as hard."

"How much diachylum will you want, then, Mr. Beer?"

66 'Well, I don't know. Let's see!" and Jan pulls up his blue trousers, and pulls down his gray rig and furrows, and considers his broad and shaggy shins.

"Matter of four pennies broad; two to each leg;" and then replaces his elbows, and smokes

on.

"I say, doctor, that 'ere curate came out well last night. I shall go to church next Sunday." "What," asks the satellite, "after you upset he that fashion yesterday?"

"I don't care what you thinks," says Jan, who, of course, bullies his jackal like most lions; "but I goes to church. He's a good un, say I, — little and good, like a Welshman's cow; and clapped me on the back when we'd got the man and the maid safe, and says, 'Well done our side, old fellow!' and stands something hot all round, what's more, in at the Mariner's Rest. doctor, where's he as we hauled ashore? up and see un.”

I say, I'll go