Then came the painful suspense, the agony of hope and fear; it might after all be but a spar, or a black fish, or anything save what they wished. No--it was a boat, a real boat; but her crew might not see them--they might be fishing--they might never think of the wreck; then the poor exhausted fellows strained their throats in a feeble hail, or rather a hoarse, desperate shriek. But the boat is bearing down upon them--she nears them. “Wreck ahoy! hilli-ho!” Never was music like to this on mortal ear. Her sharp nose comes dancing and dipping over the waves, the glance of her oars flashes in the sun; now they can distinguish the forms of the rowers--now the cheery voices of their countrymen gladden their very heart’s core--and now she is alongside; and despair is over--suspense and misery are forgotten--and the past is like a dream. The steamer had struck far nearer the shore than her reckoning had given the captain reason to suppose, and her guns had at length been heard by some fishermen on the beach at St. Swithin’s. There was a heavy sea running; but the lifeboat was soon manned, and our old friend Hairblower himself took the stroke-oar, and manfully those gallant fellows pulled till they reached the wreck. They had fallen in with the ship’s boats about half-way from the shore, and now brought the welcome news of their almost undoubted safety. “To think of you and Master Charles being aboard, sir,” said Hairblower, who seemed to consider the whole matter of the wreck as an every-day occurrence. “This is, indeed, what may well be called ‘a circumstance,’ if ever there was ‘a circumstance’ hereaway;” and he settled his two friends comfortably in the stern of the lifeboat, ere he busied himself to place the rest of the rescued seamen where they would least interfere with the efforts of the oarsmen. They were soon safely disposed, and by sundown, wet, weary, and exhausted, they stood once more upon that shore which they had scarcely dared to hope they should ever see again. When Charlie woke the following morning in a comfortable room at the Royal Hotel, the first person that greeted his opening eyes was honest Hairblower. That worthy had taken entire possession of his former _protégé_, and now made his appearance with a steaming glass of hot brandy-and-water, the only orthodox breakfast, in his opinion, for a man who had been wrecked the day before; though rather disgusted at Charlie’s obstinacy in refusing this specific, he was extremely anxious to assist him through his toilet, and was only to be got rid of by an assurance that his young favourite would be down to breakfast, where he would answer all his questions, and listen to all his protestations, in an incredibly short space of time. Hairblower accordingly drank the brandy-and-water himself, and waited patiently during what appeared to him an unreasonably long period to spend in the process of adornment.