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"The ship's boats--" he began, but the captain raised his gun and fired

twice aft along the side of the vessel Cries of pain and a good deal

of splashing in the sea proved that he had expedited the departure of

several Indians ere perched on the rails beyond the reach of

Walker's steam jet

"The ship's boats," went on Christobal calmly, "have turned up in some

mysterious manner, just in the nick of time A few minutes more, and

they would have been too late"

"But where have they come from? Where can they have been all these

days?" whispered Elsie, whose eyes were so dimmed that she perforce

abandoned the effort toon in the sea near the

ship

"My brain reels under the wildest guesses At present we are chiefly

concerned in the fact that they are here Yet people say that the age

of miracles has passed: obviously a foolish remark"

Those who have been plucked from the precipice by a sleeve, as it were,

are seldoht which

should apparently swamp all others They either yield to the strain,

and lapse into unconsciousness, or their minds become the arena of

minor emotions, wherein trivialities play battledore and shuttlecock

with the tree of all that had happened, joined to a nicer adjustment of the

time-factor in events, enabled Elsie to realise the extraordinary