boat instead a crying lad of fifteen, who said he was afraid to die.

So it was that Jean Jacques took to the water side by side with the
Basque captain, when the Antoine groaned and shook, and then grew still,
and presently, with some dignity, dipped her nose into the shallow sea
and went down.

"The rest of the story to-morrow," Jean Jacques had said when the vessel
struck the iceberg the night before; and so it was.

The boat in which Carmen had been placed was swamped not far from shore,
but she managed to lay hold of a piece of drifting wreckage, and began to
fight steadily and easily landward. Presently she was aware, however, of
a man struggling hard some little distance away to the left of her, and
from the tousled hair shaking in the water she was sure that it was Jean
Jacques.

So it proved to be; and thus it was that, at his last gasp almost, when
he felt he could keep up no longer, the wooden seat to which Carmen clung
came to his hand, and a word of cheer from her drew his head up with what
was almost a laugh.

"To think of this!" he said presently when he was safe, with her
swimming beside him without support, for the wooden seat would not
sustain the weight of two. "To think that it is you who saves me!" he
again declared eloquently, as they made the shore in comparative ease,
for she was a fine swimmer.

"It is the rest of the story," he said with great cheerfulness and aplomb
as they stood on the shore in the morning sun, shoeless, coatless, but