The vessel could be seen by the flashes of lightning, struggling to get to sea.  At last she disappeared.  The storm rose and the wind blew a perfect hurricane.  Fernando had gone to see Captain Lane to make a full report.  It was midnight, and he was still with the captain, when the boom of a gun at sea was heard.  That was no gun of battle but a signal of distress.

“What is it?” cried Captain Lane.

“It’s the Xenophon.  I fear she cannot weather the storm.”

Then they listened for an hour or more to the occasional boom of a cannon.

“She’s comin’ right in on the stony point sou’east o’ the bay,” cried Captain Lane.

Fernando started to his feet and said: 

“We must go to their rescue.”

At this Morgianna, who had been ministering to the wounded, entered and said: 

“Are they not enemies?”

“Yes, but fellow-creatures, also.  Those signal guns call out humanity, and the bravest are the most humane,” said Fernando.

“I am glad you said that!” she remarked as Fernando hurriedly left the shelter in which the captain lay.

Day dawned and the Xenophon was a broken wreck scattered along the Maryland coast.  Occasionally a bruised and bleeding form was picked up senseless or dead among the rocks, or on the beach.  Sukey was busiest among the searchers; but the scenes of horror and suffering which everywhere met his view changed his hatred to pity.

At last he came upon a poor, bruised, thoroughly soaked, wretched-looking man lying among some rocks, where the angry waves and receding tide had left him.  His once elegant uniform was now rotten, dirty rags.  One gold epaulet was gone, and the other was so mud-besmeared that one could scarce tell what it was composed of.

[Illustration:  SUKEY’S THUMB LIFTED THE HAMMER OF HIS GUN.]

It required a second look for Sukey to recognize in that miserable creature, drawing every breath in pain, the haughty Captain Snipes, who had scourged and disgraced him.  Snipes had severe internal injuries and was dying.  Sukey’s thumb lifted the hammer of his gun, then he gazed on the agonized face of his enemy, and, the tears starting to his eyes, he let down the hammer.  At this moment Fernando came up, and Sukey cried: 

“I can’t do it, Fernando,—­I can’t do it!  I’ve prayed for this, for years, but now that it’s given me, I can’t.  It’s Captain Snipes, but he’s too bad hurt to kill.”

“God has punished him,” said Fernando, solemnly.  “Verily, ’vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.’”

They lifted their enemy as gently as if he had been their dearest friend and bore him to a fisherman’s cottage, where Sukey did all in his power to alleviate his suffering; but his time on earth was short.  Captain Snipes sank rapidly.  That he was conscious and recognized his nurse no one can doubt, for just half an hour before he died, he took Sukey’s hand and spoke the only words he was heard to utter after the wreck.