Here and there about the wreck vestiges of paint appeared, and a faint assemblage of letters formed the name _Defender_ on what had been the prow. This paint Rachel brought to temporary brightness by rubbing it with a corner of her apron dipped in sea water. The sand that clogged the ribs of the wreck she removed daily with a shovel. In brief, no waning sovereign, already in the clutch of death could have been waited upon by a trusty handmaiden with more patience and love. In her day she had sailed many a stormy sea, that ship, and without doubt had made many a difficult port; but now in the days of her nothingness to be loved with a love passing that of sailor or captain (for in such affection there is ever something of the seaman's pride in the capabilities of his craft), to be loved, forsooth, with a deep feminine tenderness,--surely, if comfort were possible to those broken bolts and spars, the wreck was comforted. And, testifying to the gallantry inherent in every timber, all that remained of her responded to the thrill of the child's spirit. It was as if the wreck heard commands summoning her to deeds of spiritual daring. The stumps of her masts she lifted to the sky with an air of defiance, she resisted the encroachments of the sand; and in the upward sweep of her lines toward her broken bow, there was indomitable courage and pride invincible. Valour answered valour and the sun shone gently on the incongruous playmates, on the wreck whose earthly voyages were over, and on the child whose life's journey had scarcely begun. For the figure-head, Rachel entertained a somewhat different sentiment. It was evidently a bit of German carving, and represented a robust goddess with face lifted to the sky. Full waves of hair blew back from the face; the chin was gone, the nose was gone, but in the gaze of the eyes was blank, unquestioning triumph. She was clad in swirling drapery and a breastplate of overlapping scales, and in the one arm that remained to her she carried a sceptre tipped with a diminutive crown. Rachel admired the way the figure-head stood proudly erect, even strained backwards, and sometimes grasping a stick, she paced the sands in grotesque imitation of the wooden woman. But more often she sat before her lost in silent contemplation. She saw her fastened to the prow of a vessel, "great-kneed, deep-breasted," with lips and eyes stung by the spray; she saw her bowing deep into the trough of a wave, her gaze as she sank still intrepidly lifted to heaven; and she saw her rise again, dripping, all gilded by the light of the sun. The exhilaration of life and hope were still in the figure-head, wrought into her with the carving, it would seem, and these qualities her later experience in the brine had heightened to a kind of glory, so that now, unmindful that she was stranded, she stared out at the dawns and the evenings and the far-away twinkling stars with the same undaunted look of conquest.