Very shortly the yacht and the half-submerged man parted company. The
former was steered for the open sea; the latter drifted and tossed
helplessly to and fro, growing hourly weaker and more and more
benumbed, but always hanging on with convulsive tenacity to the
friendly timber that buoyed him up, and was his last frail chance of
life.
All night long he was in the water, and when day dawned it seemed all
over with him, so overpowering was his despair. Consciousness had
quite abandoned him, and he was almost at the last gasp when he was
seen and picked up by a passing steamship, the _Burlington Castle_.
"Where am I?" he asked, faintly, on coming to himself. He was in a
snug cot, in a small but cosy cabin.
"Where you'd never have been but for the smartness of our look-out
man," said a steward at his bedside. "Cast away, I suppose, in the
gale?"
"No: washed overboard," replied McKay, "last evening."
"Thunder! and in the water all those hours! But what was your craft?
Who and what are you?"
"I was on board the yacht _Arcadia_. My name is Stanislas McKay. I am
an officer of the Royal Picts--aide-de-camp to General Wilders. Where
am I?" he repeated.
"You'll learn that fast enough; with friends, anyhow. Doctor said you
weren't to talk. But just drink this, while I tell the captain you've
come to.
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