The men gaped at him, huddling back a little across the floor, their eyes fixed on Jeffray’s unflinching face and the pistol that covered them. “Drop the drink. One—two—” The man who held the tin mug, with neat rum swelling over the lip thereof, let the thing fall as though it burned his fingers. “Good. Stand up, all of you. Now, listen to me.” They obeyed him sullenly, like men in whom utter weariness of soul and body had numbed all strength and self-respect. Jeffray understood the crude pessimism that possessed them. They had lacked leadership, for the shivering sot who held the lamp had been the first to confess defeat at the hands of the sea. “Come, lads, we’ll have no more drinking. Captain George, will you have the stuff thrown over into the sea? Steady, steady, stand back for the captain.” The man who had been crouching on the bucket, started up, and, pushing his comrades aside, seized on the keg of rum and carried it to the door. “I’m with you, sir,” he said; “you’ve got the right stuff in you, by damn, you have!” From that moment Jeffray’s personality dominated the ship. He spoke to the men bluntly, bravely, and the frank manliness of his words went home into each rough heart. “Come, lads,” he said, “we are all British to the bone. Who says die?” He tossed his pistols aside on to a bunk, stripped off his coat and waistcoat, and rolled up his sleeves. “I’m one of you, and I’ll work till my back breaks. I have my lass on board, and I’ll fight to the last before I see her drown.” That touch of humanism perfected it. The men gave him a cheer, shook the hands he held out to them, and went to work like heroes at the pumps. For an hour Bess knelt in the cabin under the poop with Jeffray’s _St. Thomas à Kempis_ in her hands. She was listening, listening through the rush of wind and waters, for any sound that might betray the purpose of the night. All the past happenings of the year seemed to flash before her eyes, even as memories flash through the brain of a drowning man. She held Jeffray’s book against her bosom, careless of how the water from the broken windows soaked her dress. Bess was growing cold and hopeless as she knelt, when she heard a voice calling to her through the weakening wailing of the wind. “Bess! Bess!” She sprang up and unlocked the door, to find herself in Jeffray’s arms. “We have won! We have won!” He was drenched to the skin, but warm and aglow with working at the pumps. “The old ship will float.” “Thank God!” “Come out with me and see the dawn.” She unclasped her cloak and wrapped it round him, though he tried to protest against the deed. Together they went out on the deck, and stood hand in hand, sheltered by the bulwarks from the wind. In the east, above the grayness of the sea, the first golden breaking of the day fired the clouds with burning light. The storm was dying, and the _Sussex Queen_ lay like a sick woman who rests in peace after the delirium of the night.