The line was coiled about his body, but his limbs were free, and he seemed quite unhurt, and strangely unsurprised to be so, though but a moment back he had been prepared for destruction.
He was soon on the lee side of the wreck, and after some little difficulty was hauled on board, being too weak to lift himself from the water.
He fell when set down upon the deck, and only then discovered that two of the bones in his left foot were broken, and that blood was draining from a gash nine inches long in his thigh. He also became aware that, unlike the Candia, the wreck carried a mixed cargo of humanity, and was amused even in his unhappy plight to notice that its immense relief and gratitude quite overruled any considerations of sex.
There was no surgeon on board, the saloons were awash; but the women tore up their petticoats to bind his wound, and, rolled in blankets from the deck-house, he was made fast to the driest part of the poop.
There, drenched with spray and in a good deal of pain, he lay till evening, declining to use the means of safety he had provided till all but the captain and second mate had left the ship. The rigging up of a traveller had proved a difficult matter with the wreck heeling over as the tide left her, and the wind rising again after the ebb made all other means of communication impossible.
The captain was only got on board the Candia as darkness was falling, and Caragh had some salve for his hurts in the knowledge that the wreck slid off the reef and sank at high water before the next dawn.
He drew near Ballindra with sentiments a good deal modified by his adventure.
Life had proved itself to be worth more to him than he had supposed, and sheer weakness from loss of blood as he lay bandaged on the sunny deck made the quiet certainty of a woman's love seem good in itself.
Sir Anthony had telegraphed a very picturesque account of the rescue, and owing to the Candia having to put back to land her new passengers Lettice had read the story before Caragh arrived.
There is, perhaps, no happier moment possible to a woman than that in which she hears the world applauding the man she loves and is about to marry.