He made more than one frantic effort to wrench his crushed limbs, and torn and bleeding flesh out of the sudden and terrible trap into which he had fallen; but all such attempts were hopeless and futile, and he would pause exhausted and as pale as a corpse, with the perspiration wrung by agony, mingling with the spray on his temples. That he must soon be drowned, or die in an ecstasy of suffering was but too evident. "I have often thought to die, Derrick," said he, in a husky voice, "and knew that the day and hour must come to me as they come to all; but I never thought to die thus. Blessed be God, that she knows nothing of it! Do you hear me, Braddon, my old comrade?" And the servant wept as his master wrung his hand, and in weaker accents urged him to take possession of the two documents which were of such value to the family, and to preserve them even as he would his own life; and with tears in his eyes--tears that mingled with the wind-swept foam--Derrick promised to do so; and every minute Richard Trevelyan's once powerful and athletic frame grew weaker and weaker. Some of the arteries of his limbs had been torn as well as the ligaments, and he was evidently bleeding to death in his half-crushed situation. Amid their own sufferings and danger, his dying words and prayers were unheeded by the pale and drenched wretches who clung close by to the windlass and forecastle ring-bolts; but terribly his sinking accents fell on the tympanum of Derrick's listening ear. His whole soul seemed as if filled by the idea of those he should never see again. His last utterances were all about Sybil, Denzil, and their mother; he imagined himself to see them, to be speaking to them, to hear their voices, and to feel their kisses on his sodden face, over which the sea washed ever and anon; and thus, happy it might be in his delirium, he passed away, and when more of the wreck broke up, the body dropped quietly into the sea, and was swept away in the trough to leeward, just as the grey dawn began to steal in, and the wind and waves to go down together, as if their object had been accomplished in the destruction of the ill-fated ship. A boat that was not stove in, but was still dragged alongside by the fall-tackle, was now properly lowered. Ten men who survived got on board of her and shoved off from the wreck. But Derrick, who, in grief and weakness, had dropped asleep in the forecastle bunks, was unseen or forgotten by them in the hurry and selfishness of the moment; thus when he awoke, the sun was nearly setting, and he was alone upon the sea, for the boat had been picked up by one of Her Majesty's steam vessels, the captain of which duly reported the circumstance, with the loss of the _Admiral_, to Lloyds and the owners in London.