"Good God, Captain Sheldon, I thought you were done for! Why didn’t you come, sir? Wang gave me your orders; we hauled up the boats very quietly as you said, and got into them, while he kept the Chinamen busy forward with talk. He said you would come, sir; but we were discovered, and I had to sheer off. I was afraid they’d sink the boats, sir, before we could do anything. I didn’t know what weapons they had. I was just planning an attack, sir. Then I thought I saw them stab old Wang...." "I’ve got Wang" said Captain Sheldon solemnly "They did stab him. Those weren’t my orders—they were his. And he’s the only one to pay the price!" The young captain was beginning to face a harder lesson than the mere loss of a vessel. "I don’t understand, sir. Wasn’t it the right thing to do?" The mate was completely puzzled by this new development. "Yes, yes, it was the right thing to do!" cried Captain Sheldon impatiently "He was right, and I was wrong. Now leave me alone" He bent above the shrunken form of the old steward. Wang’s eyelids fluttered; he was slowly regaining consciousness. "Wang, why didn’t you come and tell me, in time to save all this?" The Chinaman’s eyes regarded him with a stare of mingled surprise and affection, a stare that somehow suggested a wise and quiet amusement. "I tellee you, Cappen. You no savvy. S’pose no savvy, no can do. Mus’ wait, makee savvy." It was a terrible condemnation. Captain Sheldon ground his teeth at the bitter truth of it. His own obstinacy, his own evil! Nothing that Wang could have said, before the thing had happened, would possibly have changed his mind. He had committed himself to error. The old servant had been forced to save them single-handed, to retrieve his master’s failure with his own life. Wang was muttering, as he neared the end. He was about to join "Old Cappen" With a good report and a clean record. No one could have known the depth of the calm that had come to that aged heart. Even the awful pain of the wound had stopped, under the shock of the cool water. He seemed to be drifting off into an eternal opium dream. "What is it, Wang? Can I do anything for you?" "No, sir, Cappen. Bym’by, finishee" He lay quiet for a moment, then plucked at the other’s sleeve. "Old Cappen say, boy step high. Look out! Maybe more-better stop, look-see" Captain Sheldon buried his face in his hand. Had the words come with lesser force, they would have infuriated him; had the advice been given as advice, it would have defeated its own ends. But now it came with the authority of death, sealed with the final service it came with the meaning of life, and could not be denied. *RESCUE AT SEA* *RESCUE AT SEA*