The captain was a kind-hearted man, and there is nothing that excites the sympathy of a sailor quicker than a wreck, for it is a peril to which they are all and always exposed, and he at once ordered the man at the wheel to keep away. Soon the figures of the men on the spar were visible from the deck, and they looked as if they were both dead. Getting near them, the Diamente’s top-sail was hove aback, and a boat lowered, to bring the sufferers on board. When she brought them, both men were insensible, though their faint breathing gave evidence that life had not yet departed. All the crew and passengers were gathered around the gangway, to see the rescued ones as they were passed on board. As Willis came over, Francisca, with the quick eye of love, recognized him, and, shocked at his dreadful appearance, fainted. None else recognized the handsome slaver, in the begrimed, sunburnt, blood-stained, and skeleton figure before them. And attributing Francisca’s swoon to pity, for a sight so horrible, carried her below. Mateo and Willis were laid on deck, for the purpose of being resuscitated before they were carried below. Willis, who was much the most debilitated of the two, from the loss of blood he had sustained, for a long time resisted all efforts to restore animation. But Mateo, who had swooned but a short time before they were discovered, more easily recovered his faculties. But only partially and confusedly had his mind been restored, for, startled by the noise and bustle around him, bewildered, and remembering the desperate fight before the schooner was blown up, and seeing bending over him the face of De Vere, whom he had always known as an enemy, he thought he was again in the hot and heady fight, and staggering to his feet, before any one could stop his movements, he had drawn his sheath-knife, and shouting feebly, in Spanish, “Give it to the English dogs!” he plunged his knife to the hilt in the breast of De Vere; and overcome by the exertion, sunk again senseless on deck; falling across the body of the English captain, who had dropped dead. Clara sprung forward, and pitching off Mateo, took her husband on her lap, and eagerly tried to staunch the fast welling blood, but it was useless. The spirit had already fled; in her arms she held but an inanimate corse! She fainted, and fell by the side of her husband, and looked as if her soul had also taken its departure. So cold and deathlike did she look, that it was impossible to tell in which the principle of life still existed, the husband or the wife.