"Why, Mister Snelling," said I, as soon as I came fully to myself, "I can't at all understand how I got into the water!" "Nor I either, sir," said he; "I'll be hanged, sir, if I didn't think it was a whirlwind of Niggers off the top of Diana's Peak, seeing I made out the very one we found there this afternoon--the four of them took you and this other gentleman up in their arms in a lump, as you were floundering about together, and took to the water like so many seals, sir!" I looked down into the Frenchman's face, where he lay stretched with his head back and his hair dripping. "Is he gone?" said I. "Well, sir," said the mid, who had contrived to light the lantern again, "I'm afraid he's pretty near it. Is he a friend of yours, sir?--I thought as much, by the way you caught him the moment you clapped eyes on each other, sir." "Silence, sirrah!" said I: "d'ye see anything of the light to seaward?" For a minute or two we peered over the swells into the dark, to catch the twinkle of the signal again, but to no purpose; and I began to think the bird was flown. All of a sudden, however, there it was once more, dipping as before beyond the heave of the sea, and between the backs of it, sliding across the open space, with the blind side to the cruisers. "Hallo, my lads!" said I, quickly, and giving myself another shake as I seized the tiller, "give way seaward--stretch your backs for ten minutes, and we have her!" We were pulling right for the spot, when the light vanished, but a show of our lantern brought it gleaming fairly out again, till I could even catch glimpse by it of some craft or other's hull, and the iron of one boom-end, rising over the swells. "Bow-oar, there!" whispered I; "stand by, my lad, and look sharp!" "Hola!" came a short sharp hail over the swells; "_d'où venez-vous?" "Oui, oui!_" I sung out boldly, through my hand, to cover the difference as much as possible; then a thought occurred to me, recollecting the French surgeon's words on board this very craft the first time we saw her--"De la cage de l'_Aigle_"--I hailed--"bonne fortune, mes amis!" "C'est possible! c'est possible, mon capitaine!" shouted several of the schooner's crew, jumping upon her bulwarks, "que vous apportez _lui-même_?" We were pulling for her side as lubberly as possible, all the time--a man ran up on her quarter with a coil of line ready to heave--but still the main boom of the schooner was already jibing, her helm up, and she under way; they seemed half doubtful of us, and another moment might turn the scales. "Vite, vite!" roared I, choosing my French at hap-hazard. "Oui, oui, jettez votre corde--venez au lof, mes amis!"--luff, that was to say. I heard somebody aboard say it was the American--the schooner came up in the wind, the line whizzing off her quarter into our bows, and we came sheering down close by her lee quarter, grinding against her bends in the surge, twenty eager faces peering over at us in the confusion; when I sung out