With the help of two of the mutineers, Hughes had been carried into the cabin, and laid on the spare sails; some weak brandy-and-water had been given him, and the blood washed from the pale face and clotted hair. "It comes too late," muttered Isabel, as she bent over her husband's body. "It comes too late. What to me is yonder ship? Father and husband, father and husband gone!" she moaned. "Hush!" said the missionary, as he sponged away the blood with a handkerchief; "hush! he is not dead, only half drowned, and stunned." The sailor Gough had, in his drunken fury, beaten his antagonist's head against the jagged ends of the spars. The yielding water had softened the shock, but as the two leaned over him, and the grey dawn stole across the ocean, his head presented a terrible spectacle. They poured more spirit and water down his throat, and gradually the colour came back to his face. He opened his eyes, looking wildly around, and as he did so, the light of returning consciousness came back to them. At this moment, the boom of the whaler's forecastle gun was again heard, as her men, who had in the darkness of the night seen only the flash of the pistols, now caught sight of the raft, her head yards being at once braced round, and her bows brought as near the wind as possible. The sound struck the injured man's ear. "It is help, it is safety," whispered Isabel. "Enrico, it is a ship!" The soldier's eyes closed, his lips moved, and the blood mounted slowly to his cheeks. "My Isabel, my beloved!" he murmured. A flood of tears poured from Isabel's eyes as she threw herself into his arms; and the missionary left the cabin, drawing down the sail as he did so over the opening. The raft did not show such proofs of the deadly fight which had taken place on board of her as might have been imagined. The dead body of the old captain was carefully placed amidships, near his boxes of gold dust; that of the carpenter, Morris, beside it, for he too was dead. Adams, whose splinter wound had broken out once more with the excitement of the fray, was looked to. The mutineers who had fallen had been disposed of by the sharks, whose large fins could yet be seen from, time to time, as they moved slowly round and round the raft, seeking for more prey. "We might have knowed what 'ud come on it," said one of the now humble seamen, as he dashed a bucket of water over a large red patch of blood; "I never seed them chaps, but I knowed as Davy Jones a wanted some on us." And so the morning dawned over the ocean, and the diminished crew on board the raft; the wind still light from the westward, and the sail yet dragging her almost imperceptibly through the water. Slowly the first streaks of light spread over the waste of ocean, as the haggard, worn-out men, pale from excitement and from the effects of drink, looked out eagerly for the ship, which they knew was near them.