Let us take advantage of this lapse of time to go back a little and see what had become of Olly Burdeen. The salt water and the barnacles told but too true a tale: he had been thrown upon the lesser rock, which the next tide would submerge. If he had still any doubt of that terrible fact, it must have been dispelled when the moon rose amid broken clouds and showed him the “Calf’s tail” churning the waves at the end of his surf-fringed reef; also the glimmering back of the “Old Cow,” with its encircling surge, a furlong or more to the south. An old, sad moon it was, with a distorted, melancholy face peering above the illimitable desolation of waters; yet a welcome sight to the drenched and shivering castaway, waiting on his lonely ledge for the tide to return and cover it. No wonder it appeared to him not the cheerful orb he knew, but some ancient, decayed satellite coming to look for the last time on a lost world! After his long labor with his rude paddle, and the effort it had cost to swim to the rock and scramble out upon it, he was nearly exhausted; and the discovery of barnacles in the pool had quenched what remained of his courage. There was no shelter from the wind; and in his wet clothes he felt a deadly chill striking to his bones. Then followed another discovery, which did not tend to restore his spirits. He had from the first given up the boat as lost. It had disappeared in the dark and turbulent water almost as soon as he left it; nor could he see anything of it afterward. It was an old dory that had been hired for the season by one of Mrs. Murcher’s boarders. Olly had taken that, too, without leave; but it was the custom on the coast for people to make rather free use of any boats that came in their way. With it had gone his sole means of escape from certain death; otherwise he would have cared little for the loss. In his fearful anxiety about his own safety, he had thought little even of the safety of the watch. He hated the recollection of it; for, probably, if it had not been for that, it might never have occurred to him to row out from shore in order to get a sight of the returning yacht, around the point. After the moon rose, he looked across the tumbling billows at the “Old Cow” wallowing in their froth, and felt that his salvation lay in reaching that before the rising tide should sweep him from the “Calf.” Yet, how was that possible? The very thought of swimming so far, alone in the night, in the wild ocean, was frightful to him. Yet as a last resort he might be driven to make so desperate an attempt. As for the water, it could hardly seem colder than the wind that pierced his drenched clothes. He no longer thought of any injury to them—the stylish suit that had been a delight to his soul a few hours before! He wept with despair as he thought of the joy that had turned to such bitter woe; and he wished he had never seen the giver or his gift.