“Now look ’ee! We be forty league south o’ Danish river. How be we to get there? Not by walking, wi’ the woods full o’ French and English dogs! Besides, by the shore ’tis more like eighty leagues than forty. Therefore, turn toward Severn. Ye fool, we may not have a mile to go! We’ll find redskins anywhere about here, at the first creek we come by, and Injun canoes too. They’re all down at the coast for the trade, them that don’t live here. Follow the coast east and we’ll come on ’em, certain. Then we ha’ the tarpaulins for sails to our canoe. Blood and wounds! Get a canoe and head north--what better d’ye want? Canoe can go over the shallows--French ships must go six leagues out to sea to find a draft o’ seven fathom! D’ye get it in your thick head?” “Ay, master----” “Keep it there, then.” Deakin knocked the man sprawling and leaped to his feet. “Shanks’ mare and away! The storm be falling by to-night, most like.” The four men rose and went lurching off along the edge of the trees, following the low line of the shore and keeping their eyes open for the first sign of a creek. Half frozen though they were, they dared not linger here to light a fire. Meanwhile, with the strong set of currents bearing it eastward along the coast, all the tangled top-hamper of the wreck drifted away, and in the midst of it was Crawford. So it happened that the four men, staggering onward by the shore, came upon this tangle of lines and spars, grounded upon a shallow. Crawford was alive and awake by this time, but there was scarce enough life in his brain to admit any impressions; his body was quite helpless, sodden garments fast frozen to the maintop that held him above water, and waves still breaking over him. None the less, he dimly comprehended that there was clear sunlight overhead, and that the tempest was over. So he was not dead after all! Not dead, yet not far from it; and evidently dreaming, since there dimly pierced to his senses, as though from some great distance, the brazen tones of Moses Deakin. “What, ye will not? Blood and wounds, but I say ye shall! Into the water, all of ye! In, and haul him ashore. But for him ye’d be frozen stark in irons this minute, ye rogues; and Moses Deakin pays tit for tat. Move sharp, or I’ll bash your lousy heads!” Crawford tried to see who spoke, but his feeble gaze could comprehend only ice and water. The spars and wreckage surged. Then in front of him he beheld a fragment of jagged wood upflung, and it came toppling at him, nor could he move a muscle to avoid it. Down it came, crashed him across the head and forced him under the water, and again his eyes closed and he knew no more.