seemed to be the last thing he might expect at that moment--and made one last struggle for life. But, even as his senses failed him, and he was sinking backward in that fatal embrace, a pair of strong hands clutched his hair and arm, and for a few seconds he felt as though, between the sea on the one hand and a sturdy British seaman on the other, he were being torn asunder. Presently, however, the wave receded; the awful feeling of being sucked back left him, and, opening his eyes, he saw that he was on terra firma, with the sea behind him. "Now run," shouted the seaman--one Jake Irwin, who had been in the boat with him,--"run, Master Trevose, before the next sea catches ye." At the same time he dragged the lad up the beach with all his strength, and they reached safety as another wave came rolling hungrily after them, to retire again with an angry snarl, as though cheated of its lawful prey. Roger stood up and wiped the wet from his eyes and ears, and wrung the water out of his clothes as well as he could, and looked about him. He saw the two seamen--one of whom had rescued him, only just in the nick of time, from a watery grave--standing close by; and not far from them he perceived the figure of the man whom they had come to rescue, and for whom they had so nearly met disaster. The seamen who had rowed in the boat seemed none the worse for their adventure, and asked the lad how he felt, and whether he had suffered from the accident to the boat. Roger, aching in every limb and muscle from his recent struggle in the water, felt himself carefully over, and was able to assure them that he had broken no bones. The stranger now approached and spoke to them, thanking them and applauding their bravery in coming away to save him, despite the threat of the gale that was by this time raging furiously. The man, it appeared, was an Englishman, and, in answer to a question put by Roger, he confessed that, as the captain had suggested on the deck of the flag-ship, he had been one of a crew of pirates, and, having incurred the displeasure of his captain and the enmity of his companions, had been marooned on the sand-bank with but a small stock of provisions and no means of obtaining more when those were exhausted; he had been allowed neither fishing-tackle nor musket with powder and shot, although the latter would not have been of very much use to him, for the island was small and so far away from the mainland that birds very seldom made their appearance there. It appeared that he had been on the sand-bank some thirty-six days, with the few provisions that they had been moved to give him, and nothing else beside but the clothing he stood up in.