The night waned, and as eight bells sounded Dick Fenton went on deck to smoke a cigar before turning in. The ladies had all retired, and only a single night lamp burned in the saloon. The wind had drawn ahead a good deal, and the vessel could only carry close-reefed main-topsail and fore-topsail, so that she was making very little way, simply ‘forging,’ as sailors say, at the rate of about two knots an hour. A favourite seat with Dick when he went on deck to smoke his cigar was on the rail near the mizzen shrouds. There he was under the shelter of the captain’s gig, which was slung outside on davits, and his feet rested on a hencoop that ran along the poop. Sitting there now pensively dreaming of his Red Lily, and the happiness that awaited him on the morrow when she would become his wife, he had no thought of danger. There was music in the rush of the wild waters and the screaming sweep of the wind. The vessel had that short, jerky motion which a ship has in a rough sea when under reefed topsails. Suddenly there rose up before Dick’s vision the dark figure of a man. ‘Hallo! is that you, captain?’ exclaimed Dick. ‘No,’ was the answer, and in the gruff voice Dick recognised the second mate. ‘Oh, it’s you, Cornell,’ he said. ‘This is a wild night. Do you think the wind will free at all before the morning?’ ‘It may, and may not,’ was the somewhat surly answer, and in the husky tones Cornell betrayed that he was the worse for liquor. ‘I suppose you were thinking of the Red Lily,’ he remarked. ‘Really, Mr. Cornell, you are a little familiar,’ Dick said, not unkindly, for he was willing to make every allowance at such a time. ‘Bah, why am I familiar?’ sneered the second mate. ‘I suppose the night before his marriage every man thinks of the woman who is to be his wife.’ ‘I suppose he does,’ Dick answered curtly, for he was not anxious to prolong the conversation seeing the strange humour Cornell was in. ‘You have quite made up your mind that she is to be your wife?’ asked Cornell. ‘Well, please God that nothing happens between now and the morning, Miss Hetherington will certainly become Mrs. Fenton.’ ‘But it is destined that _something_ shall happen,’ Cornell exclaimed, ‘and you will never see the morrow.’ The words were spoken rapidly, and with a lightning-like movement he threw the whole weight of his body against Dick, who, unprepared for such an assault, was pressed backwards, and falling between the boat and the side of the vessel was lost in the dark, hissing waters. ‘A man overboard!’ cried the second mate with all the power of his lusty lungs, and instantly the dreadful cry was taken up, and the watch came rushing aft. The captain, who was in his cabin, tore on deck, and in a moment all was confusion. ‘Who is it, who is it?’ exclaimed the captain. ‘Mr. Fenton, I think, for I saw him sitting on the rail a few minutes before,’ said Cornell.