“Bedad, though, there’s a chance of life at last! And sure I promised the masther to thry and save ye, and faix I’ll do it! Help me here, Terry!” said Mike Mullony, and with the assistance of Terry Riordan, the father of the Irish stewardess, he invested Miss Conyers with the life-preserver. Not an instant too soon! There came roaring onward an enormous wave that lifted itself high above and fell with annihilating force upon them. And in an instant the boat was gone, and the souls that had intrusted themselves to her were struggling in the mad sea. Britomarte almost lost her senses in this shock of doom; and then she found herself in the wild waters, kept up indeed by the life-preserver, but dashed hither and thither, a helpless creature, at the mercy of the waves. And the night was appalling with the howling of the wind and the roaring of the waters and the shrieks of the drowning men and women! In this scene of horror unutterable, Britomarte was beaten about, now driven out to sea, now dashed in towards the land; and through all one sublime thought exalted her soul above all the despair of the situation: “We are immortal souls and cannot be destroyed! We are spirits and must live forever!” At last she felt herself lifted up by an enormous wave, that, roaring as in triumph over its prey, bore her forward with great velocity and threw her with deadly force upon the shore; and with the shock she lost her consciousness. CHAPTER XI. LADY ROBINSON CRUSOE. When Britomarte awoke from that deadly state of insensibility into which the tremendous mental and physical shock had cast her, her recovery seemed like coming back to life in the grave. At first she did not know what sort of creature she was, or what state of existence she had come into. Neither memory nor thought was present with her. There was only a bodily sense of uneasiness, as the air again inflated her collapsed lungs, and the vital current resumed its flow through her damp, chilled and heavy limbs; and a mortal sense of vague despair, impossible to analyze. Instinctively she turned over and tried to rise; faintly she perceived that the palms of her hands were deep in the moist sand, and that they went deeper as she bore her weight upon them in her efforts to get up. And thus she discovered that she was on the ground. At length, after several fruitless attempts, she succeeded in lifting herself to a sitting position. And then she looked blindly around. But nothing was to be seen. All was dark as pitch. And nothing was to be heard except the thunder of the sea upon the coast—a sound that impressed her senses like some dimly remembered knell of doom.