oars well manned soon brought him within the little field of fragments,
in the centre of which the boat was floating. No wonder none of the crew
was left,--the water literally swarmed with sharks.

Standing in the bow with a boat hook, the captain warded off pieces of
wreck and gradually made his way to the strange boat.

The sight there which met his eyes Captain Lane never forgot to his
dying day. When bowed down with old age, and his feeble steps were
tottering on the verge of the grave, that scene came to him as vividly
as on that terrible day. Lying in the bottom of the boat was the burnt,
blackened and bruised form of a man, which, with some difficulty, the
captain recognized as the handsome stranger who had visited him on the
previous evening. Clinging to him, with her arms clasped tightly around
his mutilated form, a clasp which even death could not break, her fair
face pressed close to his blackened features, was the lifeless body of
the most beautiful woman Captain Lane had ever seen. The look of agony,
of commiseration, of tenderness, of pity, of horror and despair, which
was sealed upon, those lifeless features was beyond the powers of
description; but the saddest spectacle of all was a child, a little girl
about one year old, clinging frantically to the breast of her dead
mother, and gazing silently at them in frightened wonder.

For years, Captain Lane's eyes had not been dimmed with tears, but now
the fountains of grief were opened up, and his cheeks were wet. He
carefully entered the boat, felt of each cold body, laid his hand upon
each silent heart, and waited in vain for an answering signal to his
touch upon the pulse.

"It is all over," he said, and sitting down in the stern sheets of the