'When his oar broke, you know,' the talker went on, 'I began to laugh, and so I caught a crab; and while I lay in the bottom laughing like Tom of Bedlam, my oar dropped overboard, and there we were. Five mortal hours we drifted; but we had tobacco and a flask, and we didn't mind so very much. Some boat, we thought, might pick us up.' 'Some boat!' echoed Armorel. 'And outside Samson!' 'As for the rocks, we never thought about them. Had we known of the rocks, we should not have laughed----' 'You have saved our lives,' said the young man in the velvet jacket. He had a soft sweet voice, which trembled a little as he spoke. And, indeed, it is a solemn thing to be rescued from certain death. 'Peter did it,' Armorel replied. 'You may thank Peter.' 'Let me thank you,' he said, softly and persuasively. 'The other man may thank Peter.' 'Just as you like. So long, that is, as you remember that it will have to be a lesson to you as long as you live never to go out in a boat without a man.' 'It shall be a lesson. I promise. And the man I go out with, next time, shall not be you, Dick.' 'Never,' she went on, enforcing the lesson, 'never go in a boat alone, unless you know the waters. Are you Plymouth trippers? But then Plymouth people generally know how to handle a boat.' 'We are from London.' In the twilight the blush caused by being taken for a Plymouth tripper was not perceived. 'I am an artist, and I came to sketch.' He said this with some slight emphasis and distinction. There must be no mistaking an artist from London for a Plymouth tripper. 'You must be hungry.' 'We are ravenous, but at this moment one can only feel that it is better to be hungry and alive than to be drowned and dead.' 'Oh!' she said, earnestly, 'you don't know how strong the water is. It would have thrown you down and rolled you over and over among the rocks, your head would have been knocked to pieces, your face would have been crushed out of shape, every bone would have been broken: Peter has seen them so.' 'Ay! ay!' said Peter. 'I've picked 'em up just so. You are well off those rocks, gentlemen.' Silence fell upon them. The twilight was deepening, the breeze was chill. Armorel felt that the young man beside her was shivering--perhaps with the cold. He looked across the dark water and gasped: 'We are coming up,' he said, 'out of the gates of death and the jaws of hell. Strange! to have been so near unto dying. Five minutes more, and there would have been an end, and two more men would have been created for no other purpose but to be drowned.' Armorel made no reply. The oars kept dipping, dipping, evenly and steadily. Across the waters on either hand flashed lights: St. Agnes and the Bishop from the south--they are white lights; and from the north the crimson splendour of Round Island: the wind was dropping, and there was a little phosphorescence on the water, which gleamed along the blade of the oar.