The cold grew worse and worse, and it seemed to creep toward Jack's heart. He gave one cry, and instantly he heard a faint answer. Could it be the scream of a gull? Nay, they rest at night. He called again, and the voice of his agony was answered by a loud hail; then a flare was lit, and Jack knew that the steamer's boat had been searching for him. "Easy. Shove the painter under his arms, and then two of you haul." So Jack was plumped into the boat, and lay limp and sick. In an hour he was warm asleep in his berth on board the steamer, and, I am afraid to say that he begged hard for a pipe before he dozed over. The steamer took him home, and he was received in a matter-of-fact way by his people. He had had a dousing! Yes, but it was all in the day's work. That is the way in which the good folk talk. Jack was never the same again, and some of the old men said "he looked as if he had seen something." Yes, he had seen something, and he said to Sally, "All right about that letter of yours. Let it stick to the wall." The man was very grave and kind, and he spoke freely to those of his cronies who were on shore; but he would not go near his old haunts, and some people thought he must have got religious. Perhaps he had. At any rate something that happened not long afterwards made the supposition probable. Jack was on the Ter Schelling bank when his turn came to go home again, and he was moodily wondering whether any such ordeal would ever be put on him as that which he endured when the steamer sank his vessel. The weather looked ugly; the glass went fast down, and a wild and leprous-looking moon shone lividly through a shifting mask of troubled clouds. A sullen calm fell, and the smack rolled with clashing blocks and groaning spars, making night hideous. In the morning a gale broke and soon came a blinding fall of snow. It was impossible to see many yards through the rushing drift of murky yellow, but Jack took in all four reefs, and ran on with a rag of sail and a three-cloth jib.