"I don't!" said Archelaus firmly; "begging your pardon, Miss Marvin." "I am sure you don't," laughed Hester. "Well, anyway, I'll have to tell father now," said Nuncey; "for that imp of a boy will be putting it all round the parish." But here Archelaus asserted himself. "That's my business," he said quietly. "It isn't any man's 'yes' or 'no' I'm afraid of, Miss Marvin, having stood up to _her_." CHAPTER XXVI. MESSENGERS. In Cornwall, they say, the cuckoo brings a gale of wind with him; and of all gales in the year this is the one most dreaded by gardeners and cidermen, for it catches the fruit trees in the height of their blossoming season, and in its short rage wrecks a whole year's promise. Such a gale overtook the _Virtuous Lady_, homeward bound, in mid-Atlantic. For two days and a night she ran before it; but this of course is a seaman's phrase, and actually, fast as the wind hurled her forward, she lagged back against it until she wallowed in its wake, and her crew gave thanks and crept below to their bunks, too dog-weary to put off their sodden clothes. The gale passed on and struck our south-western coast, devastating the orchards of Cornwall and Devon and carpeting them with unborn fruit-- _dulcis vitae ex-sortes_. Amid this unthrifty waste and hard by, off Berry Head, the schooner _One-and-All_ foundered and went down, not prematurely. Foreseeing the end, her master had given orders to lower the whale-boat. The schooner might be apple-rotten, as her crew declared, but she carried a whale-boat which had inspired confidence for years and induced many a hesitating hand to sign articles; a seaworthy boat, to begin with, and by her owner's and master's care made as nearly unsinkable as might be, cork-fendered, fitted bow and stern with air tanks, well found in all her gear. Woe betide the seaman who abstracted an inch of rope from her to patch up the schooner's crazy rigging, or who left a life-belt lying loose around the deck or a rowlock unrestored to its due place after the weekly scrub-down! The crew, then, launched the boat--half filling her in the process--and, tumbling in, pulled for the lee of the high land between Berry Head and Brixham. The master took the helm. He was steering without one backward look at the abandoned ship, when the oarsmen ceased pulling, all together, with a cry of dismay. On the schooner's deck stood a child, waving his arms despairingly. How he came there they could not tell, nor who he was. The master, not understanding their outcry, cursed and shouted to them to pull on. But already the starboard oars were holding water and the bowman bringing her around head-to-sea. "Good Lord deliver us!" The master carried a pair of binoculars, slung in a leathern case about his shoulders inside his oilskin coat.