It did not take me long to recover my breath. The swim had, indeed, comparatively speaking, been a short one; there was no tide that I had been in any degree sensible of; and I had lost nothing but breath, thanks to my eagerness, to the riotous tumult of spirits that had nerved my limbs with steel and rendered me unconscious of fatigue. I crawled up the ladder and peered over the rail. The gloom lay heavy upon the quarter-deck and waist, and objects were hard to distinguish. All was motionless, however, there and on the forecastle; but I could now discern two figures walking on the poop on the port side. The spanker-boom and mizzen-mast and the several fittings of skylight and companion, and so on, had concealed them from my observation whilst I swam, approaching the ship as I had on the starboard side. Their shapes showed tolerably clear against the stars that sparkled over the rail and betwixt the squares of the rigging, and I stood staring with no more of me showing over the line of bulwarks than my head till they had come to the rail that protected the break of the poop, and I then made out that one of them was Miss Temple. This convinced me that the other must be Wetherly, for it was not to be imagined that the girl would seek refuge from even a more frightful loneliness than hers was in the society of young Forrest. At that instant I heard a long wild halloa dimly coming through the steady breeze from the shore. The cry was followed by another and yet another, and then it seemed to me that it was re-echoed from off the water some distance ahead of us. I sprang in a bound on to the deck, and in a breath had armed myself with an iron belaying-pin; and now if that man were Forrest with whom Miss Temple was, I was ready for him! In a moment I had gained the poop. The cries ashore had brought the pair to a dead halt, and they stood listening. Now that I was on the poop I perceived by the build of the figure of the man that it was Wetherly, and rushed up to him. The girl recoiled with a loud shriek on seeing me, as well she might; for, having partially undressed myself, I was clothed from top to toe in white; I was dripping wet besides, which moulded my attire to my figure and limbs as though I had been cast in plaster of Paris, and my sudden apparition was as if I had shaped myself out of the air. ‘Is that you, Wetherly?’ I cried. ‘Great God, mum, it’s Mr. Dugdale!’ he roared. The girl uttered another shriek, came in a bound to me and flung her arms round my neck. Now the halloaing ashore was incessant, and the wild cries sounding through the wind were as though the island had been suddenly invaded by an army of frenzied cannibals. ‘My dearest!’ I cried, letting forth my heart in that moment of being clasped and clung to by her whom I had long loved and was risking my life to save, ‘it is I indeed! But release me now, my darling girl. We must get the barque under weigh instantly. Wetherly, where is Forrest?’ ‘Dead, sir.’