‘Poor Grant was as good a seaman as ever trod plank. I knew him well,’ said Mr. Frankston. ‘He had been first mate of her for years, under old Fleetby, and this was his second voyage in command. He was as smart a man as Charley Carryall, and that is saying a good deal.’ ‘What was the cause, then, of the disaster? It seems so near the port of entrance.’ ‘It wasn’t weather like this, you may be sure,’ said Paul. ‘Unluckily, after a first-class run, poor Grant made the light, sometime after nightfall, on as misty, driving, dirty a night as ever these old rocks saw. He stood off and on until an hour or so past midnight, when, finding the gale increasing and the wind setting in dead inshore, he determined to run for the Heads, trusting to his own seamanship and his close knowledge of the channel, that he had passed through a score of times in all weathers, at all hours of day and night.’ ‘But how could he miss the proper opening?’ asked Ernest. ‘God knows! The weather was awful. The coast just here does change shape a little, as if there was an opening. The ship had been driven in too close ashore; if they saw the lighthouse, her course would bring her stem on to these awful rocks. It seems that they never knew their mistake till they were among the breakers.’ ‘And how could that be known?’ ‘_One_ man was saved,’ answered Paul. ‘The last thing he saw of poor Grant was forward, in the chains. That was just before she struck. When she did strike she must have gone to pieces in ten minutes, and two hundred passengers, who were dreaming of home and friends, or the sweet sight of shore with the morning sun, ere that sun rose were drifting or mangled corpses.’ ‘What a day of mourning it was in Sydney!’ said Antonia; ‘hardly a family in the city but had friends or relations on board. A favourite ship, with a favourite captain, numbers of returning colonists had waited or hurried in order to sail by her.’ ‘We must all take our chances, my dear, more particularly those people who are foolish enough to be sailors. Hector Grant met a sailor’s death, and I’ll swear he took his lot coolly when it came, caring more for the poor passengers than himself. For them it was different. I always pitied the landsmen and their families, when I stood a fair chance of going to Davy Jones myself. Hallo! the wind’s shifted two points. There’s an ugly bank, too. It will give us enough to do to get home before the southerly breeze comes up.’ As they commenced to beat back against the breeze, which, appearing to gain strength rapidly, necessitated rather more promptness and seamanship than their outward-bound voyaging had required, Ernest was constrained to admire the coolness and total absence of timidity which Miss Frankston displayed.