his burden, clung to the lower gunwale. By a desperate effort he drew
himself up, when a face vaguely remembered--as part of a bad
dream--looked into his, with a dash of surprise.

"Eh?--Gimme a hand--"

The asked-for hand swept suddenly under the one grasping the side of the
boat, and shot up sharply. In the darkness and confusion no one saw the
act. The convict disappeared, but his half-articulate curses followed.

"The fellow's let go," muttered Lord Ronsdale with a shiver.

At the steering oar the chief mate, hearing the cries of the man, cast a
swift glance over his shoulder and hesitated. To bring the boat,
half-filled with water, around now, meant inevitable disaster; one
experiment of the sort had well-nigh ended in their all being drowned.
He knew he was personally responsible for the lives in his charge; and
with but an instant in which to decide, he declined to repeat the risk.

"He's probably gone by this time, anyhow," he told himself, and drove
on.

The convict, however, was not yet quite "gone"; as the boat receded
rapidly from view, becoming smaller and smaller, he continued
mechanically to use his arms. But he had as little heart as little
strength to go on with the uneven contest.

"He's done me! done me!" he repeated to himself. "And I ain't never
goin' to git a chance to fix him," he thought, and looked despairingly
at the sky. The dark rushing clouds looked like black demons; the stars