While all this was being done, a little scene took place upon the quarter-deck which was worthy of notice. Something heavy and solid, thrown upward by the tremendous force of the discharge, struck the rail with a mighty crash at the moment of the explosion, just at the point where Katharine, wide-eyed, petrified with horror, after that one vivid glance in which she apparently saw her lover dead on his own quarter-deck beneath her, stood clinging rigidly to the bulwarks as if paralyzed. It was the body of a man; instinctively she threw out her strong young arm and saved it from falling again into the sea on the return roll of the ship. One or two of the seamen standing by came to her assistance, and the body was dragged on board and laid on the deck at her feet. Something familiar in the figure moved Katharine to a further examination. She knelt down and wiped the blood and smoke and dust from the face of the prostrate man, and recognized him at once. It was old Bentley, desperately wounded, his clothes soaked with blood from several severe wounds, and apparently dying fast, but still breathing. A small tightly rolled up ball of bunting was lying near her on the deck; it was a flag from the Randolph, which had been blown there by the force of the explosion. She quickly picked it up and pillowed the head of the unconscious man upon it. Then she ran below to her cabin, coming back in a moment with water and a cordial, with which she bathed the head and wiped the lips of the dying man. The fires were all forward, and, the wind being aft, the danger was in the fore part of the ship; no one therefore paid the least attention to her. There was, in fact, save the captain and one or two midshipmen, no one else on the poop-deck except her father, who like herself had been overwhelmed by the sudden and awful ending of the battle. Being without anything to do, the colonel, who had been watching the men fight with the fire, happened to look aft for a moment and saw his daughter by the side of the prostrate man. He stepped over to her at once. "Katharine, Katharine," he said to her in a tone of stern reproof and surprise, not as he usually spoke to her, "you here! 'T is no place for women. When did you come from below?" "I've not been below at all, father," she replied, looking up at him with a white, stricken face which troubled his loving heart. "Do you mean to tell me that you have been on deck during the action?" "Yes, father, right here. Do you not understand that it was Mr. Seymour's ship--I could not go away!" "By heavens! Think of it! And I forgot you completely-- The fault was mine, how could I have allowed it?" he continued in great agitation. "Never mind, father; I could not have gone below in any case. Do you think he--Mr. Seymour--can be yet alive?" she asked, still cherishing a faint hope. The colonel shook his head gloomily, and then stooping down and looking at the prostrate form of the man on the deck, he asked,--