"I' faith!" gasped he, with exhausted breath, "I think I've touched bottom. Blessed be the Virgin, I have!" he continued, at the same time standing erect, with head and shoulders above the surface of the water. "All right!" cried Harry, imitating the upright attitude of the young Hibernian. "Bottom it must be, and bottom it is. Thank God for it!" Colin, with a similar grateful ejaculation, suspended his stroke, and stood upon his feet. All three instinctively faced seaward--as they did so, exclaiming-- "Poor Old Bill!" "In troth, we might have brought him along with us!" suggested Terence, as soon as he had recovered his wind; "might we not?" "If we had but known it was so short a swim," said Harry, "it is possible." "How about our trying to swim back? Do you think we could do it?" "Impossible!" asserted Colin. "What, Colin, you are the best swimmer of us all! Do you say so?" asked the others, eager to make an effort for saving the old salt, who had been the favorite of every officer aboard the ship. "I say impossible," replied the cautious Colin; "I would risk as much as any of you, but there is not a reasonable chance of saving him, and what's the use of trying impossibilities? We'd better make sure that we're safe ourselves. There may be more deep water between us and the shore. Let us keep on till we've set our feet on something more like terra firma." The advice of the young Scotchman was too prudent to be rejected; and all three, once more turning their faces shoreward, continued to advance in that direction. They only knew that they were facing shoreward by the inflow of the tide, but certain that this would prove a tolerably safe guide, they kept boldly on, without fear of straying from the track. For a while they waded; but, as their progress was both slower and more toilsome, they once more betook themselves to swimming. Whenever they felt fatigued by either mode of progression, they changed to the other; and partly by wading and partly by swimming, they passed through another mile of the distance that separated them from the shore. The water then became so shallow, that swimming was no longer possible; and they waded on, with eyes earnestly piercing the darkness, each moment expecting to see something of the land. They were soon to be gratified by having this expectation realized. The curving lines that began to glimmer dimly through the obscurity, were the outlines of rounded objects that could not be ocean waves. They were too white for these. They could only be the sand-hills, which they had seen before the going down of the sun. As they were now but knee-deep in the water, and the night was still misty and dark, these objects could be at no great distance, and deep water need no longer be dreaded. The three castaways considered themselves as having reached the shore. Harry and Terence were about to continue on to the beach, when Colin called to them to come to a stop. "Why?" inquired Harry.