"It's the Beatific Baby!" cried Little Miss Grouch. "How did he ever get there? Oh! Oh!! Get him, some one!" Near an opening at the rail of the ship some of the third-class luggage had been left. Upon this the Pride of the Steerage had clambered and was there perilously balancing, while he waved his hands at his departing friends. There was a deeper-toned answering cry to Little Miss Grouch's appeal, as the mother, leaping to the rail, ran swiftly along it, seized and hurled her child back, and, with the effort, plunged overboard herself. By the time she had touched the water, the Tyro's overcoat and coat were on the deck and his hands on the rail. "Take that life-preserver," he said, with swift quietness to Little Miss Grouch. "As soon as you see me get her, throw it as far beyond us as you can. You understand? Beyond. There she is. _Damn!!_" For Little Miss Grouch's arms had closed desperately around his shoulders. With his wrestler's knowledge, he could have broken that hold in a second's fraction, but that would have been to fling her against the rail, possibly over it. He twisted until his face almost touched hers. "Let me go!" In all her pampered life Miss Cecily Wayne had never before been addressed in that tone or anything remotely resembling it, by man, woman, or child. Her grip relaxed. She shrank back, appalled. For perhaps a second she had checked him, and in that second the huddle of blue had drifted almost abreast. It was an easy leap from where the Tyro stood. One foot was on the rail, when he staggered aside from an impact very different from the feminine assault. Mr. Henry Clay Wayne had turned from an absorbing conversation with Mrs. Denyse in time to see his daughter in hand-to-hand combat with a man. Observing the man now about to precipitate himself into the sea, he formulated the theory of an attempted robbery and escape, and acted with the promptitude which had made him famous in Wall Street. As he was a decidedly husky one hundred-and-seventy-pounds' worth, his arrival notably interfered with the Tyro's projects. Now the Tyro's naturally equable temper had been disturbed by the other encounter, and this one loosed its bonds. Here was no softening consideration of sex. Who the interferer was, the Tyro knew not, nor cared. He drove an elbow straight into the midsection of the enemy, lashed out with a heel which landed square on the most sensitive portion of the shin, broke the relaxed hold with one effort, and charged like a bull through the crowd now lining the rail at the stern curve,--and stopped dead, as a general shout, part cheers, part laughter, arose. The woman was ploughing through the water with great overhand strokes. In a few seconds she stood on the tender's deck, while the crowd congratulated and questioned.