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Joe threw off all the turns save the last, which he held with one hand, while with the other he attempted to bring in on the painter. But at that instant it tightened with a tremendous jerk, the boat sheering sharply into the crest of a heavy sea. The rope slipped from his hands and began to fly out over the stern. He clutched it frantically, and was dragged after it over the sloping deck.

It fell to him to put up one of these monuments, with a sorrowful inscription to all that was left to him on the following morning, the "memory" of a beloved wife and an infant thirty-one days old, drowned in crossing the bar on October 6, 1853. We have strewed our best to the weeds unrest, To the shark and the sheering gull. If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God, we ha' paid in full.

A sabre stroke severed Berkley's cheek-strap, sheering through visor and button; and he swung his lance and drove it backward into a man's face. In the terrible confusion and tangle of men and horses he could scarcely use his lance at all, or avoid the twirling lances of his comrades, or understand what his officers were shouting.

But there were no lights. Bedient took the wheel and brought the Savonarola sheering away to the south of the sound, which had stopped abruptly. Nothing was seen, not even a denser shadow in the moonless dark. Framtree joined them, and they waited expectantly for Jaffier's index of light to pick up the mystery.

Spent and wounded as they were, Estein's little band showed a bold front to their foes, and around the red shield of their leader their lives were dearly sold. Then for a few minutes came a lull in the fight, and men could breathe for a space. "The next onset will be the last," said Estein grimly. "Their ships are sheering off!" exclaimed one. "'Tis we who are leaving them," said another.

However, we got the top-gallant-sails down, with most of the stay-sails, and the mizen-topsail aback; but finding we still outsailed him, I had no other method left but that of sheering across his hawse, first on one bow, then on the other, raking him as we crossed, always having in view the retarding his way, by obliging him either to receive us athwart his bowsprit, in which case we should have turned his head off shore, or to sheer as we did.

But on a chance they signalled the discovery to a distant trawler, then soared upward for a general coup de l'oeil, turned there aloft like a seahawk for a while, sheering in widening spirals, and finally, high in the grey sky, set a steady course for parts unknown.

It had not changed as we progressed: ocean, sand, low dunes crowned with impenetrable tangles of wild bay, sparkleberry, and live-oak, with here and there a weather-twisted palmetto sprawling, and here and there the battered blades of cactus and Spanish-bayonet thrust menacingly forward; and over all the vultures, sailing, sailing some mere circling motes lost in the blue above, some sheering the earth so close that their swiftly sweeping shadows slanted continually across our road.

But it cannot be done as quickly as they desire; the rolling of the wreck, the mad plunging and sheering of the boat, prevent that. A sturdy middle-aged man named Brown a common name, frequently associated with common sense is having a rope fastened round his waist by one of the lifeboat crew named Jones also a common name, not seldom associated with uncommon courage.

You'll be obliged to him, won't you, Kate?" he cried, pitching his voice over his shoulder; and then, in a whisper, "She's a bit down at whiles, and what wonder, and her so near but you'll see, you'll see," and he winked and nodded knowingly. There was no harking back, no sheering off on the score of modesty before Pete's large faith.