manship applied to actual fighting!"
A hum of approval rose.
"What use the discovery, if none lives to tell of it?" said Iberville with weary irony. "Bacqueville, you might write it down in your notebook, to be washed ashore later."
The young Creole officer grinned. "I'm a Royal Commissioner, not a naval officer, Pierre. All I can say is that you fought the ship for three hours and more."
Iberville lifted his head. "And not dead yet!" he exclaimed with a flash of spirit. "Ha, brave eyes!" His gaze warmed on Bess Adams, as she handed him more wine. "Not badly hurt after all, eh?"
She was about to answer, when the ship seemed to lift and shake herself. Then came a deafening shock, a crash that hurled Bess Adams into a corner, and darkness as the one light was extinguished. The rudder had been ripped out bodily.
Next moment a huge following sea pooped the ship squarely, smashing all the after cabins into ruined wreckage; icy water was sent cascading through the entire vessel. A wild cry went flittering along the decks. The cables had parted, and the ship was at the mercy of the wind and sea.
It was midnight, after two hours of blind, staggering lunges, when she finally struck upon the shoals.
Those next hours, in pitch icy darkness, were hours of hell and superhuman exertions. Tremendous battering seas broke over the shattered wreck, snow came down in gusts and thick flurries; to care for the sick and wounded men, many of whom were washed away to death, became the first object of everyone. When the gray light of dawn at last came, it was all too evident that the frigate was fast breaking up.
Bess Adams, at the point of total exhaustion, had no strength, no life, remaining. A line about her waist, she was held securely in the lee of the poop, half frozen. Now, as the daylight grew, she lifted agonized eyes toward shore, and once more her heart sank. The snow ceased, to reveal a tree-fringed shore barely within sight—a good six miles distant.
It seemed the end of all hope. None the less, the indomitable Iberville stirred his men to action; he, whose energy never flagged, had strength for all. With some, he fell to work making rafts, in the waist. Others cut spars adrift and set out for the distant line of shore.
Iberville caught sight of the figure crouching under the poop, abandoned his work, and came to the girl with a flash of his gay, radiant smile.
"What, lad? You've given up hope? Nonsense! Come, there's a place for you on the first raft."
She looked up at him, all her poor wild heart in her eyes.
"No, monsieur. Not until you go."
"Why, God love you, brave eyes!" Touched, Iberville reached out and caught her hand, and looked into her face. "Very well; we're comrades, you and I. We'll go together, on the second raft. The wounded, or what's left of them, go on the first. Wait here, and I'll not forget you."
To his hearty grip, his look, his voice, she warmed. Alone again, she watched and waited while the men toiled on. Some were swimming for shore, others drowned as they were licked off.
Crash upon crash resounded, as the doomed hulk quivered under the raven-
