My Danish Sweetheart, Volume 3 of 3

On the afternoon of this same day of Tuesday, October 31, Helga having gone to her cabin, I stepped on deck to smoke a pipe-for my pipe was in my pocket when I ran to the lifeboat, and Captain Bunting had given me a square of tobacco to cut up.

We had dined at one. During the course of the meal Helga and I had said but very little, willing that the Captain should have the labour of talking. Nor did he spare us. His tongue, as sailors say, seemed to have been slung in the middle, and it wagged at both ends. His chatter was an infinite variety of nothing; but he spoke with singular enjoyment of the sound of his own voice, with ceaseless reference, besides, in his manner, to Helga, whom he continued silently and self-complacently to regard in a way that rendered her constantly uneasy, and kept her downward-looking and silent.

But nothing more at that table was said about our leaving his ship. Indeed, both Helga and I had agreed to drop the subject until an opportunity for our transference should arrive. We might, at all events, be very certain that he would not set us ashore in the Canary Islands; nor did I consider it politic to press him to land us there, for, waiving all consideration of other reasons which might induce him to detain us, it would have been unreasonable to entreat him to go out of his course to oblige us, who were without the means to repay him for his trouble and for loss of time.

He withdrew to his cabin after dinner. Helga and I sat over his draughtboard for half an hour; she then went below, and I, as I have already said, on deck, to smoke a pipe.

The wind had freshened since noon, and was now blowing a brisk and sparkling breeze out of something to the northward of east; sail had been heaped upon the barque, and when I gained the deck I found her swarming through it under overhanging wings of studdingsail, a broad wake of frost-like foam stretching behind, and many flying fish sparking out of the blue curl from the vessel's cutwater ere the polished round of brine flashed into foam abreast of the fore-rigging. Mr. Jones stumped the deck, having relieved Abraham at noon. The fierce-faced, lemon-coloured creature with withered brow and fiery glances grasped the wheel. As I crouched under the lee of the companion-hatch to light my pipe, I curiously and intently inspected him; strangely enough, finding no hindrance of embarrassment from his staring at me too; which, I take it, was owing to his exceeding ugliness, so that I looked at him as at something out of nature, whose sensibilities were not of a human sort to grieve me with a fancy of vexing them.

'Well, Mr. Jones,' said I, crossing the deck and accosting the shabby figure of the mate as he slouched from one end to another in shambling slippers and in a cap with a broken peak, under which his thimble-shaped nose glowed in the middle of his pale face like-to match the poor creature with an elegant simile-the heart of a daisy, 'this is a very good wind for you, but bad for me, seeing how the ship heads. I want to get home, Mr. Jones. I have now been absent for nearly eleven days, though my start was but for an hour or two's cruise.'

'There's no man at sea,' said he, 'but wants to get home, unless he's got no home to go to. That's my case.'

'Where do you hail from?'

'Whitechapel,' he answered, 'when I'm ashore. I live in a big house; they call it the Sailors' Home. There are no wives to be found there, so that the good of it is to make a man glad to ship.'

'The sea is a hard life,' said I, 'and a very great deal harder than it need be-so Nakier and his men think, I warrant you. There's too much pork goes to the making of the Captain's religious ideas.'

'The pork in this ship,' said he, 'is better than the beef; and what is good enough for English sailors is good enough for Malays.'

'Ay! but the poor fellows' religion is opposed to pork.'

'Don't you let them make you believe it, sir,' he exclaimed. 'Religion! You should hear them swear in English! They want a grievance. That's the nature of everything afore the mast, no matter what be the colour of the hide it's wrapped up in.'

'What sort of sailors are they?'

'Oh, they tumble about; they're monkeys aloft; they're willing enough; I'm bound to say that.'

I could instinctively guess that whatever opinions I might offer on the Captain's treatment of his crew would find no echo in him. Poverty must make such a man the creature of any shipmaster he sailed with.

'Have you received orders from Captain Bunting,' I asked, 'to signal and bring-to any homeward ship that may come along?'

'No, sir.'

'We wish to be transhipped, you know, Mr. Jones. We should be sorry to lose the opportunity of a homeward-bounder through the Captain omitting to give you orders, and through his being below and asleep, perhaps, at the time.'

'I can do nothing without his instructions, sir,' he exclaimed, with a singular look that rose to the significance of a half-smile.

'All right!' I said, perceiving that his little blue eyes had witnessed more than I should have deemed them capable of observing in the slender opportunities he had had for employing them.

The wind blew the fire out of my pipe, and to save the tobacco I went down to the quarter-deck for the shelter of the bulwarks there. While I puffed I spied Jacob low down in the lee fore-rigging repairing or replacing some chafing-gear upon the swifter-shroud. I had not exchanged a word with this honest boatman since the previous day, and strolled forward to under the lee of the galley to greet him. I asked him if he was comfortable in his new berth. He answered 'Yes;' he was very well satisfied; the Captain had given orders that he was to have a glass of grog every day at noon; the provisions were also very good, and there was no stint.

''Soides,' he called down to me, with his fat, ruddy face framed in the squares of the ratlines, 'three pound a month's good money. There'll be something to take up when I gets home, something that'll loighten the loss o' my eight pound o' goods and clothes, and make the foundering of the Airly Marn easier to think of.'

'You and Abraham, then, have regularly entered yourselves for the round voyage?'

'Ay; the Capt'n put us on the articles this afternoon. He called us to his cabin and talked like a gemman to us. Tain't often as one meets the likes of him at sea. No language-a koind smoile-a thank'ee for whatever a man does, if so be as it's rightly done-a feeling consarn for your morals and your comforts: tell'ee, Mr. Tregarthen, the loikes of Capt'n Buntin' ain't agoin' to be fallen in with every day-leastways, in vessels arter this here pattern, where mostly a man's a dog in the cap'n's opinion, and where the mate's got no other argument than the fust iron belaying-pin he can out with.'

'I am very glad to learn that you are so well satisfied,' said I. 'A pity poor Thomas isn't with you.'

'Pore Tommy! There's nothen in my toime as has made me feel so ordinary as Thomas's drownding. But as to him making hisself happy here--'

'I beg your pardon, sah,' said a voice close beside me.

I turned, losing the remainder of Jacob's observations, and perceived the face of Nakier in the galley door, that was within an arm's length of me from where I leaned. His posture was one of hiding, as though to conceal himself from sight of the poop. As I looked, a copper-coloured face, with black, angry eyes flashing under a low forehead as wrinkled as the rind of an old apple, with the temper that worked in the creature, showed behind Nakier's head, and vanished in a breath. I now recollected that when I had first taken up my station under the lee of the galley I had caught the hiss of a swift fiery whispering within the little structure, but it had instantly ceased on my calling to Jacob, and the matter went out of my head as I listened to the boatman in the rigging.

'I beg your pardon, sah! May I speak a word wit you?'

'What is it, Nakier?' I exclaimed, finding a sort of pleasure in the mere contemplation of his handsome face and noble liquid Eastern eyes, dark and luminous like the gleam you will sometimes observe in a midnight sea.

'Are you a sailor, sah?'

'I am not,' I responded.

'Can you tellee me de law of ships?'

Here the copper-coloured face came out again, and now hung steadily with its frown over Nakier's shoulder; but both fellows kept all but their heads hidden.

'I know what you mean,' I answered. 'I fear I cannot counsel you.'

'Our Captain would have us starve,' said he; 'he give us meat we must not eat, and on dose days we have only bread and water. Dat is not right?'

'No, indeed,' said I; 'and how little we think it right you may know by what the lady said to-day.'

'Ah! she is good; she is good!' he exclaimed, always speaking very softly, and clasping his long thin fingers with filbert-shaped nails while he upturned his wonderful eyes. 'We are not of de Captain's religion-he sabbe dat when we ship. Is dere law among Englishman to ponish he for trying to make us eat what is forbidden?'

'I wish I knew-I wish I could advise you,' said I, somewhat secretly relieved by hearing this man talk of law; for when I had watched him that morning on the poop I could have sworn that his and his mates' whole theory of justice lay in the blades which rested upon sheaths strapped to their hips. 'One thing you may be sure of, Nakier: Captain Bunting has no right to force food upon you that is forbidden to you by your religion. There must be lawyers in Cape Town who will tell you how to deal with this matter if it is to be dealt with. Meanwhile, try to think of your Captain in this business as--' I significantly tapped my forehead. 'That will help you to patience, and the passage to the Cape is not a long one.'

The copper-coloured face behind Nakier violently wagged, the frown deepened, and the little dangerous eyes grew, if possible, more menacing in their expression.

'He is a cruel man,' said Nakier, with a sigh as plaintive as one could imagine in any love-sick Eastern maid: 'but we will be patient; and, sah, I tank you for listening.'

The copper-coloured face disappeared.

'You are no sailor, sah!' continued Nakier, smiling and showing as pearl-white a set of teeth as were ever disclosed by the fairest woman's parted lips; 'and yet you have been shipwreck?'

I briefly related my lifeboat adventure, and in a few words completed the narrative of the raft and of our deliverance by the lugger. Indeed, it pleased me to talk with him: his accent, his looks, were a sort of realization, in their way, of early boyish dreams of travel; they carried me in fancy to the provinces of the sun; I tasted the ripe aromatic odours of tropic vegetation, there seemed a scent as of the hubble-bubble in the blue and sparkling breeze gushing fair over the rail. He begot in me a score of old yearning imaginations-of the elephant richly castellated, of the gloom of palatial structures dedicated to idols, their domes starry with encrustation of gems and the precious ores.

The brief spell was broken by Jacob's gruff, 'longshore voice:

'It don't look, Mr. Tregarthen, as if you and the lady was to git home as fast as ye want to.'

'No,' I replied. 'Do you see anything in sight up there, Jacob?'

He spat, and looked leisurely ahead.

'Nothen, sir.'

'I beg pardon, sah!' broke in Nakier's voice. 'Do you sabbe navigation?'

'I do not,' I answered, struck with a question that recalled Punmeamootty's inquiries that morning.

'But Mr. Vise,' he continued, 'he sabbe navigation?'

I shook my head with a slight smile.

'He has some trifling knowledge,' said I. 'Fortunately, there is no occasion to trust to his skill.'

'De sweet young lady sabbe navigation, sah?'

'I will not answer for it!' I exclaimed, looking at him. A sudden fancy in me may have been disclosed by my eyes. His gaze fell, and he drew in his head. Just then I caught sight of Helga at the break of the poop to leeward, looking along the decks. She saw me, and beckoned. As I knocked the ashes out of my pipe, Jacob cried out:

'Blowed if I don't believe that's a steamer's smoke ahead.'

'Ha!' thought I, 'Helga has seen it;' and I at once made for the poop-ladder.

It was as I supposed. She had seen the smoke when she came on deck, and instantly looked about for me. It was the merest film, the faintest streak, dim as a filament of spider's web; but it was directly ahead, and it was easy to guess that unless the steamer was heading east or west she must be coming our way, for assuredly, though the Light of the World was sweeping through it at some six or seven knots, we were not going to overhaul a steamer at that pace.

A telescope lay in brackets inside the companionway; I fetched and levelled it, but there was nothing more to be seen than the soaring of the thin blue vein of smoke from behind the edge of the sea, where the dark, rich central blue of it went lightening out into a tint of opal. It did not take long, however, to discover, by the hanging of the smoke in the same place, that the steamer was heading directly for us. I put down the glass, and said to Mr. Jones:

'Will you be so good as to call the Captain and tell him that there is a steamer in sight, coming this way?'

'I have no orders to call the Captain merely to report a ship in sight, sir,' he answered.

'That may be,' said I; 'but here is a chance for us to leave this vessel, and the Captain might not thank you to keep him ignorant of the opportunity.'

'I can't help it, sir. My duty here is to obey orders and to do what's expected of me, and no more;' and so saying, he marched shambling aft; yet I will not say that his manner of leaving me was abrupt or offensive.

'There is no time to be lost, Helga,' said I. 'If that steamer is doing ten and we are doing six the joint speed is sixteen knots, and she will be abreast of us and away again quickly. I will report to the Captain myself,' with which I went on to the quarter-deck and passed into the cabin and knocked on the door of Captain Bunting's berth.

He immediately cried:

'Who's there?'

'Mr. Tregarthen,' I answered.

'Are you alone?' he called.

I told him I was.

'Then pray walk in,' said he.

I opened the door and found him lying in his bunk in his shirt-sleeves. Full as I was of the business of the steamer heaving into view, I could yet manage to notice, now that he was under no particular obligation to smile, that his habitual grin when his face was off duty, so to speak, was of the kind that is called sardonic. It was the set of his mouth with the thick curve of its upper lip that made the smile; but his eyes bore not the least part in this expression of mirth. It was a mere stroke of nature in him, however, and, though the congenital grin did not increase his beauty, it left untouched in his countenance the old character of blandness, self-complacency and an air of kindness too.

'What can I do for you, Mr. Tregarthen?' said he, promptly sitting up in his bunk, with a glance around for his coat.

'I must ask your pardon for intruding upon you,' said I; 'there is a steamer's smoke in sight over the bows. Mr. Jones declined to report to you. I venture to do so, and I have also to ask you, Captain Bunting, to signal her to stop that she may receive Miss Nielsen and me.'

'I shall be very willing to transfer you, Mr. Tregarthen,' said he, without more or less significance in his manner than was usual in it; 'but you must not, you really must not, ask me to part in this sort of hurry with your sweet engaging companion.'

'I certainly shall not leave you without her,' said I, breathing quickly.

'Just so,' he exclaimed, 'nor is it my wish that you should. I want you to convert your experience of shipwreck into a little holiday cruise. I hope you are comfortable with me?'

'Perfectly comfortable; but all the same, Miss Nielsen and I desire to return to England, and I must entreat-indeed, Captain Bunting, I must insist upon your signalling the steamer that is rapidly approaching us.'

He opened his eyes at the word insist, which I deplored having made use of the moment it had escaped me; but he continued very bland, and his smile, being now vitalized, as when he was at the table or on deck with us, had lost what I had found sardonic in it.

'A captain's powers, Mr. Tregarthen, are considerable,' he exclaimed. 'He is first on board his own ship; his will is the law that governs the vessel; no man aboard but he can insist for an instant. But my desire is for cordial feelings between us. Let us be friends and talk as friends. Pray bear with me. You are in possession of my hopes. Do not add fears to them by your behaviour.'

He dropped his head on one side, and surveyed me with an eye that seemed almost wistful. I believed that he meant to keep me talking till the steamer had passed.

'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'I am as fully disposed as you are to be friendly; but I must tell you that, if you decline to transfer us-if, in other words, you force us to proceed on this voyage-you will be acting at your peril. I shall exact reparation, and whatever the law can do for me shall be done. Practically you will be abducting Miss Nielsen, and that, you must know, is a highly punishable offence.'

He motioned with both his hands.

'It is no abduction,' said he. 'When you rescue a young lady with your lifeboat from a foundering craft you do not abduct her. I can understand your impatience, and forgive your irritability. Yet I had thought to have some claim upon you for a more generous, for a handsomer interpretation of my wishes. What is the reason of this extreme hurry in you to return home?'

'You surely do not require me to repeat my answer to that question!' I exclaimed, curbing my temper with an effort.

'To be sure. You are concerned for your poor dear mother. Come, Mr. Tregarthen, suppose we send news of your safety by this steamer you have reported!' His face beamed. 'Let me see-your home is-your home is--' he scratched his head. I viewed him without speaking. 'Ah, I have it-Tintrenale!' He spelt it twice or thrice. 'Hugh Tregarthen, Tintrenale. Come, the steamer shall report your safety, and then your mind will be at ease.'

'I am to understand that you refuse to transfer us?'

'Nay, never interpret the mind of another harshly. You know my wishes: every hour renders them dearer and dearer to me.'

Under all this blandness I could now perceive a spirit of resolution that was clearly no more to be influenced by me than his ship's side was to be kicked out by a blow of my foot. I turned to leave the cabin.

'If you are going on deck, will you have the kindness to send Mr. Jones to me?' said he.

I pulled the door to, and regained the poop.

'The Captain wants you,' I called to Mr. Jones, who immediately left the deck.

Helga came to me.

'He refuses to tranship us,' said I.

'He dare not!' she cried, turning pale.

'The man, all smiles and blandness, says no, with as steady a thrust of his meaning as though it were a boarding-pike. We have to determine either to jump overboard or to remain with him.'

She clasped her hands. Her courage seemed to fail her; her eyes shone brilliant with the alarm that filled her.

'Can nothing be done? Is it possible that we are so entirely in his power? Could we not call upon the crew to help us?' A sob arrested her broken exclamations.

I stood looking at the approaching steamer, wrestling with my mind for some idea to make known our situation to her as she passed, but to no purpose. Why, though she should thrash through it within earshot of us, what meaning could I hope to convey in the brief cry I might have time to deliver? I cannot express the rage, the bitterness, the mortification, the sense, too, of the startling absurdity of our position, which fumed in my brain as I stood silently gazing at the steamer, with Helga at my side, white, straining her eyes at me, swiftly breathing.

In the short time during which I had been below, the approaching vessel had shaped herself upon the sea, and was growing large with a rapidity that expressed her an ocean mail-boat. Already with the naked sight I could catch the glint of the sun upon the gilt device at her stemhead, and sharp flashes of the reflection of light in some many-windowed deck structure broke from her, end-on as she was, to her slow stately swaying, as though she were firing guns.

The Captain remained below. A few minutes after Mr. Jones had gone to him, he-that is, the mate-came on to the poop bearing a great black board, which he rested upon the deck.

'Captain Bunting's compliments, Mr. Tregarthen,' said he, 'and he'll be glad to know if this message is satisfactory to you?'

Upon the board were written, in chalk, in very visible, decipherable characters, like the letters of print, the following words:

HUGH TREGARTHEN, OF TINTRENALE,

BLOWN OUT OF BAY NIGHT OCTOBER 21ST,

IS SAFE

ON BOARD THIS SHIP, 'LIGHT OF THE WORLD,'

BUNTING, MASTER, TO CAPE TOWN.

PLEASE REPORT.

'That will do,' said I coldly, and resumed my place at the rail.

Helga said, in a low voice:

'What is the object of that board?'

'They will read the writing aboard the steamer,' I answered, 'make a note of it, report it, and my mother will get to hear of it and know that I am alive.'

'But how will she get to hear of it?'

'Oh, the message is certain to find its way into the shipping papers, and there will be twenty people at Tintrenale to hear of it and repeat it to her.'

'It is a good idea, Hugh,' said she. 'It is a message to rest her heart. It may reach her, too, as quickly as you yourself could if we went on board that steamer. It was clever of you to think of it.'

'It was the Captain's suggestion!' I exclaimed.

'It is a good idea!' she repeated, with something of life coming into her blanched, dismayed face; 'you will feel a little happier. I shall feel happier too. I have grieved to think your mother may suppose you drowned. Now, in a few days she will know that you are well.'

'Yes, it is a good idea,' said I, with my eyes gloomily fastened upon the steamer; 'but is it not monstrous that we should be imprisoned in this fashion? That fellow below has no right to detain us. If it should cost me five years of my income, I'll punish him. It is his admiration for you that makes him reckless-but what does the rascal hope? He talked of his willingness to transfer me, providing you remained.'

'Oh, but you would not leave me with him, Hugh!' she cried, grasping my arm.

'Leave you, Helga! No, indeed. But I made one great blunder in my chat with him this morning. He asked me if there was anything between us-meaning were we sweethearts-and I said no. I should have answered yes; I should have told him we were betrothed; then perhaps he would have been willing to let us leave him.'

She returned no answer. I looked at her, and saw an expression in her face that told me I had said too much. The corners of her little mouth twitched, she slightly glanced at me, and tried to smile on observing that I was regarding her, then made a step from my side as though to get a better view of the steamer.

'She's a fine big ship,' exclaimed Mr. Jones, who had quietly drawn close to me; 'a Cape boat. In six days' time she'll be snug in dock. When I was first going to sea I laughed at steam. Now I should be glad if there was nothing else afloat.'

My impulse was to draw away, but my temper had somewhat cooled, and was now allowing me to exercise my common-sense again. If I was to be kept aboard this ship, it could serve no sort of end to make an enemy of Mr. Jones.

'Yes,' said I, 'she is coming along in fine style-a mail-steamer apparently. Why will not the Captain signal her? Surely she would receive us!'

'Not a doubt of it,' he answered, almost maliciously; 'but the Captain knows his own business, sir.'

'Where's your flag-locker?' cried I. 'Show it me, and I'll accept the responsibility of hoisting the ensign half-mast high!'

'Not without the Captain's orders, Mr. Tregarthen,' said he.

'The Captain!' I exclaimed. 'He has nothing to do with me. He's your master, not mine!'

'He's master of this ship, sir; and the master of a ship is the master of everything aboard of her!'

Helga softly called to me. I went to her.

'Do not reason with him!' she whispered. 'Let the people in that steamer read the message, and we can afford to be patient-for a little,' she added.

'For a little!' I rejoined. 'But how long will that little make? Is it to stretch from here to Table Bay?'

But by this time the steamer was on the lee bow, and when abreast would be within a few cables' length of us. I thought to myself, 'Shall I spring upon the rail and hail her in God's name, wave my hands to her to stop, and take my chance of her people hearing the few words I should have time to bawl?' Then, with the velocity of thought, I reflected that the mate would be certain to hinder any such attempt on my part, to the length, I dare say, of laying hands upon me and pulling me off the rail, so that I might subject myself to what would prove but little short of an outrage, while I should likewise forfeit the opportunity of getting the message delivered; for there was no man on the poop to hold up the board but the mate, and if the mate was busy with me the board must remain hidden.

All this I thought, and while I thought the steamer was sweeping past us at a speed of some twelve or thirteen knots, with Mr. Jones standing something forward of the mizzen-rigging, holding up the board at arm's-length.

The picture of that rushing metal fabric was full of glittering beauty. Her tall promenade deck, draped with white awnings, out of which the black column of her funnel forked leaning, was crowded with passengers, male and female. Dresses of white, pink, green-the ladies of South Africa, I believe, go very radiantly clad-fluttered and rippled to the sweep of the strong breeze raised by the steamer's progress. Those who walked came to a stand to survey us, and a dozen binocular glasses were pointed. High above, on the white canvas bridge, the mate in charge of the ship was reading the handwriting on the black board through a telescope that flashed like silver in his hands. Beside him, twinkling in buttons and lace, stood the commander of the steamer, as I might suppose. The sun was in the south-west sky; his reddening brilliance beat full upon the ship that was thundering by faster than a hurricane could have blown the Light of the World along; and the glass in her line of portholes seemed to stream in fire as though the tall black iron sides were veritably belted with flame. There were stars of gold in her bright-yellow masts and a writhing of glowing light all about the giltwork with which her quarters were glorified. She rolled softly, and every inclination was like the twist of a kaleidoscope for tints. How mean did the little barque look at that instant! how squalid her poor old stumpy decks with their embellishment of rude scuttle-butt, of grimy caboose, of squab long-boat, not to mention the choice humanities of her forecastle, the copper-coloured scarecrows who had dropped the various jobs they were upon to stare with their sloe-like eyes at the passing show!

She had not swept past abreast by more than her own length when the twinkling commander on the bridge flourished his arm.

'And about time, too!' cried Mr. Jones, lowering the board and leaning it against the rail. 'They must be poor hands at spelling aboard that ship to keep me holding up that board as if I were a topsail-yard proper to set a whole sail upon!'

'Have they read the message, do you think, Mr. Jones?' cried Helga.

'Oh, yes, yes, miss,' he answered.

He ran in an awkward sprawl to the skylight, where the telescope lay, pointed it, and exclaimed, 'See for yourself, miss!'

She levelled the glass with the ease and precision of an old sailor.

'Yes,' she called to me, while she held the telescope to her eye; 'the man in the jacket and buttons is writing in what looks to be a pocket-book; the other bends over him as though to see that the words are correct. I am satisfied!' and, putting the glass down, she returned to me.

The steamer was now astern of us, showing but little more than the breadth of her, rapidly growing toy-like as she swept onwards, with an oil-smooth wake spreading fan-shaped from her counter, and the white foam curving with the dazzle of sifted snow from either side the iron tooth of her shearing stem. My heart ached with the yearning for home as I followed her. At that moment eight bells was struck forward, and almost immediately Abraham came aft to relieve Mr. Jones, who, after saying a word or two to the boatman, picked up the board and went below.

'There's a hopportunity lost, Mr. Tregarthen,' exclaimed Abraham, looking at the receding steamer; 'not that me and Jacob ain't satisfied, but there's ne'er a doubt that wessel 'ud ha' taken you and the lady, if so be as Capt'n Bunting had asted her.'

'We are kept here against our will,' said I. 'What the man means to do I don't know, but what he can do I now see. Unless I can get those black fellows to back the topsail and put us aboard the next ship when she comes along, here we must stop until it is the Captain's pleasure to release us.'

'But what does he want along of ye?' inquired Abraham, in a low, hoarse voice, with a glance at the open skylight.

I looked at Helga, and then said bluntly-for I had some dim hope of this boatman and his mate being able to help us, and the plain truth must therefore be given to them: 'The long and short of it is, Abraham, the Captain greatly admires Miss Nielsen-he has fallen in love with her, in short-and so you have it.'

Helga looked and listened without any air of embarrassment, as though the reference were of general instead of individual interest.

'But he hain't fallen in love with you, sir? Why do he want to keep ye both, then? Couldn't he have sent you aboard?'

'You astonish me!' I cried. 'Do you suppose I would leave this lady alone in the vessel?'

'Why, p'raps not,' he answered; 'but, still, 'tain't as if you was a lady, one of her own sex, as was hacting companion to her. Oi don't mean to say that one man's as good as another; but I don't see no call for you to keep all on in this here wessel.'

'What am I to understand you to mean?' cried I. 'That Miss Nielsen is to be left without a protector in the company of a fellow like Captain Bunting?'

'But if he's willing to be her protector, sir, ain't it all right?' he inquired.

'Has not your head been turned?' said Helga warmly, with a flushed face.

He looked stupidly from one to the other of us with a slow gaze and a mind labouring to master the difficulty he could not understand.

'Sorry if I've said anything to offend ye, miss,' said he; 'this here Capt'n's an honourable man, Oi allow, and he's evidently on the look-out for a wife. All I says is, what's the good of his keeping Mr. Tregarthen away from his home when he's willing to take his place?'

'But he must not take his place!' exclaimed Helga, with glowing eyes, in which I looked to see a tear presently. 'I would drown myself if I were to be left here alone!'

A slow smile animated the leathern countenance of Abraham.

'Then, mum, asking your pardon, all Oi can say is, Mr. Tregarthen should ha' put it differently. When there's wan there's no call for tew, and there being wan already, then, of course, it's the Capt'n's duty to send ye both home as soon as he can.'

'If Captain Bunting persists,' said I, not choosing to follow the line of Abraham's reasoning, 'what is my remedy? You Deal boatmen have the reputation of knowing the law pretty well. First, has he the right to carry us with him against our wishes?'

'There's never much question of right along with sea captains,' he answered. 'My 'sperience is that what the master of a wessel chooses to do he will do, and the rights of it somehow seems to come out of his doing of it.'

'But have we no remedy?' said I.

'Ask yourself the question!' he answered. 'Where's the remedy to be found?' and here he sent his eyes roaming over the sea and up aloft and along the decks.

'Of all Job's comforters!' I exclaimed.

'If I was you,' he continued, apparently not understanding my remark, and sending another cautious look at the open skylight, with a further subduing of his voice, 'what Oi'd do is this: Oi'd just enjoy myself at this 'ere gemman's expense, eat his wittles and drink his rum-and I'm bound to say this, that a better drop o' rum than he keeps in that there locker of his isn't to be met with afloat or ashore-I say Oi'd drink and eat at his expense, and keep my spirits as joyful as sarcumstances might permit, but taking care to let him know every day, oy, and p'raps twice a day-say at breakfast and at supper-that the lady and me wants to get home; and this Oi'd dew till we got to port, and then Oi'd bring an action agin him and sail home on the damages, with a few pound to the good.'

He had barely ceased, when he turned sharply round and marched aft, and as he did so the Captain mounted the poop ladder, exclaiming:

'What very enjoyable weather, to be sure! Mr. Jones informs me that the message was duly noted. Now, Miss Nielsen, we may take it that our friend Mr. Tregarthen's mind is perfectly at ease.'

* * *

It was four o'clock when the steamer passed, and, half an hour later, she was out of sight, so rapid was the combined pace of the vessels. Her name was large upon her stern had we chosen to read it, but the mate was too busy with his board and I with my temper to note the letters, and Helga did not think of doing so, and thus it was that the steamer passed away and none of us knew more about her than that she was a Cape Union mail-liner bound to England with now a message, meant for my mother, on board.

The Captain hung about us, and was all blandness, courtesy, and admiration when he addressed Helga or directed his eyes at her. On his first joining us she said quickly, pointing to the steamer that was still in sight:

'Why have you suffered us to lose that opportunity?'

'Mr. Tregarthen's and your company,' he answered, 'makes me so happy that I cannot bear to part with you yet!'

Her little nostrils enlarged, her blue eyes glittered, her breast quickly rose and fell.

'You called yourself a Samaritan yesterday!' she exclaimed, with all the scorn her tender soul was capable of, and her pensive, pretty face could express. 'Is this the way in which Samaritans usually behave?'

He viewed her as though she were a picture that cannot be held in a new position without disclosing a fresh grace.

'You are too good and kind to be cruel,' said he, regarding her with deepening admiration, as it seemed to me. 'The Samaritan played his part fairly well yesterday, I believe?' He blandly bowed to her with a countenance of exquisite self-complacency. 'He is still on board, my dear young lady, with a character in essentials unchanged, merely enlarged.' Here he spread his fingers upon his breast, and expanded his waistcoat, looking at her in a very knowing sort of way, with his head on one side. 'Now that we have sent our message home, there is no hurry. Our little cruise,' he exclaimed, pointing over the bow, 'is almost entirely tropical, and there is no reason at all why we should not find it delightful!'

I caught Helga's eye, and exhorted her by a glance to keep silent. She fixed her gaze upon the deck, with a lip lightly curled by disgust, and I stepped aft under a pretence to look at the compass, with so much more contempt and anger than I could hold between my teeth that I dared not speak.

The breeze slackened as the sun sank, and at supper, as the Captain persisted in calling the last meal, the ocean fell calm and the old broad-bowed barque rolled sleepily, but with much creaking of her rheumatic bones, upon a long-drawn polished swell flowing out of the north-east. Her canvas beat the masts and fetched reports out of the tall spars that penetrated the little cuddy like discharges of musketry.

For a long while the Captain gave Helga and me no opportunity for a quiet talk. At table he was more effusive than he had been, distressingly importunate in his attentions to the girl, to whom he would address himself in tones of loverlike coaxing if she happened to say No to his entreaties to her to drink a little wine, to try a slice of ham, and the like. He begged us to make ourselves thoroughly at home; his coloured cook, he said, was not a first-rate hand, but if Miss Helga ever had a fancy, she need but name it, and it would go very hard with the cook if he failed to humour her.

'We are not a yacht,' said he, pulling a whisker and looking around, 'but, most fortunately, gaudy mirrors and handsome carpets and the ginger-bread ornamentations of the pleasure craft need never form any portion of human happiness at sea. The sun looks as brightly down upon the Light of the World as upon the most stately ship afloat, the ocean breeze will taste as sweetly over my bulwark-rails as on the bridge of the gallantest man-of-war that flies the crimson cross;' and thus he went on vapouring as usual in fathoms of commonplace, yet with a bland underlying insistence always upon our being his guests, upon our remaining with him and being happy, as though, indeed, we had cheerfully consented to stop, and were looking forward with great enjoyment to the voyage.

I was as cold and distant as I could well be, answered him in monosyllables, ate as if with aversion, and as though I constrained myself to devour merely to keep body and soul together. But he did not seem to heed my manner in the least; I could swear, indeed, that he did not observe it. He was wholly engrossed in contemplation of Helga, and in the enjoyment of enlarging his waistcoat, and delivering, more or less through his nose, with a fixed smile and somewhat leering eye, the dull, trivial, insipid contents of his mind.

He asked the girl to play draughts with him when Punmeamootty had cleared the table. On her declining, he fetched from his cabin the volume of Jeremy Taylor-it was that divine's 'Holy Living and Dying,' I think-and asked permission to read a few pages aloud. She could not refuse, and I see that extraordinary shipmaster now, standing under the lamp, holding the portly volume up with both hands, smiling upon the page, pausing at intervals to look over the top of the book at the girl with a nod to serve as a point of admiration, and reading nasally without the faintest inflection, so that at a little distance his delivery must have sounded like a continuous groan. He then begged her to read to him.

'What greater treat could we have,' said he, looking at me, 'than to hear the rich, noble, impressive words of this great Bishop pronounced by the charming lips of Miss Helga Nielsen?'

But she curtly refused; and, after hovering about her for another half-hour, during which I could notice a growing air in him that was a distinct intimation, in its way, of his entire satisfaction with the progress he was making, he withdrew to his cabin.

Helga looked at me with weariness and dismay, and moistened her lips.

'This is worse than the raft,' said I.

'It is so bad,' she exclaimed, 'that I feel persuaded it cannot last.'

'Let us go on deck. If we linger here he may rejoin us. How tragical it all is one may know by the humour of it.'

We went softly to the companion-steps, and I recollect that I looked over my shoulder to see if he was following us-than which I can recall no better proof of my perfect recognition of our helplessness.

The new moon had followed the sun, and the planet would not be showing by night for two or three days; but in the south, and over our mastheads, the sky was richly spangled with stars, which burnt in one or two dyes of glory, and very sharply, whence, from recollection of a like sight at home, I supposed that hard weather was at hand. There was some little lightning, of a delicate shade of violet, in the north-east, which, indeed, would have been no noticeable thing down in this part of the world but for the mountainous heaping of cloud it revealed, a black sullen mass stretching along the sea-line in that quarter, and putting a hue as of ink into the dusk which swept in glittering obscurity to the shadow of it. There was a great deal of greenish fire in the sea, and it broadened and shrank in wide spaces in the lift of the noiseless running swell as though the rays of a tinted lantern were cast upon the water. The dew was plentiful, and lay along the rails and upon the skylight, crisp as frost in the starshine.

It was Abraham's watch, and I spied his figure flitting cumbrously in the neighbourhood of the wheel, at which stood the shape of some coloured man, motionless as though carved in ebony, faintly touched by the sheen of the binnacle lamp. I was in no humour to converse with the boatman. His stupid talk that afternoon in response to my questions had vexed me, and I was still angry with the fool, as I chose to think him, spite of the claims he had upon my kindness and gratitude.

I put Helga's hand under my arm, and we quietly patrolled the deck to leeward. Our conversation wholly concerned our position-it would only tease you to repeat it. There was nothing to suggest, no plan to propose; for think, advise, scheme as we might, it could only come to this: that if the Captain declined to part with us, then, unless the men took our side and insisted on putting us aboard a passing ship, we must stop. But if the crew took our side, it would be mutiny with them; and bewilderingly disagreeable as our situation was, preposterously and ridiculously wretched as it was, yet assuredly it was not to be mended by a revolt among those dusky skins forward.

Yet the fancy of stirring up the Malays to befriend us was in my mind as I walked with the girl.

'God forbid,' said I, 'that I should have a hand in it; yet, for all that, I believe it is to be done. I had a short talk with Nakier to-day, and there was that in his questions and his manner which persuades me that the train is ready, and nothing wanting but the spark.'

'A mutiny is a terrible thing at sea,' said she; 'and what would men like the crew of this ship stop at?'

'Ay, nothing more terrible, Helga. But are we to be carried to the Cape?'

'The Captain has no intention of putting into Santa Cruz,' said she.

'That we may be sure of. But does the fellow intend that you shall pass week after week with no other apparel than what you stand up in?'

I was interrupted by Abraham sending a hurricane shout into the blackness forward for some hands to clew up the fore and main royals, and for others to lay aft and haul down the gaff-topsail.

'It's agoing to blow to-night, Mr. Tregarthen,' he called across to me.

'Yes; and you may see where it is coming from, too,' I replied, not knowing till then that he had observed us.

In a few moments the silence that had hung upon the vessel, with nothing to disturb it but an occasional sob of water and the beating of canvas hollowing into the mast to the roll of the fabric, was broken by the strange howling noises raised by the coloured seamen as they hauled upon the gear.

'Get them sails furled, my lads!' bawled Abraham; 'and the rest of ye lay aft and take this 'ere mizzen off her.'

'It is wonderful that the fellows should understand the man,' said I.

'There's the Captain!' exclaimed Helga, instantly halting, and then recoiling in a way that dragged me a pace back with her.

He rose through the companion-hatch, his outline vaguely visible in the dim radiance sifting through the cabin skylight. Abraham addressed him.

'Quite right, Wise, very wise of you, Wise!' he exclaimed. 'There is a marked fall in the barometer, and I perceive lightning in the north-east, with a deal of rugged cloud down there.' His shadowy form stepped to the binnacle, into which he peered a moment. 'I think, Wise,' said he-and, to use a Paddyism, I could see the man's fixed and singular smile in the oiliness of his accents-'that you cannot do better than go forward and rouse up all hands. I can rely best upon my crew when the weather is quiet.'

Abraham trudged forward, and a minute later I heard him thumping heavily on the fore hatch, topping the blows with a boatswain's hoarse roar of 'All hands shorten sail!'

'The Captain's politeness,' I said, 'will end in making that Deal boatman sit at his feet.'

'He is afraid of his crew, perhaps,' answered Helga, 'and is behaving so as to make sure that the two men will stand by him should difficulties come.'

'It was a bad blow that sunk the fellows' lugger. We might have sighted that steamer of to-day and be now homeward bound at the rate of fourteen knots an hour.'

'And it is all my fault!' she cried, in tones impassioned by regret and temper. 'But for me, Hugh--'

I silenced her by taking her hand as it lay in my arm and pressing it. She drew closer to me, with a movement caressing but wistful too, though finely and tenderly simple.

I did not doubt that the Captain perceived us; nevertheless, he hung near the wheel, never coming farther forward than the companion-hatch, while we kept at the other end of the little poop, where the shadow of the port-wing of mainsail lay heavy.

Shortly after Abraham had summoned the men, the decks were alive with sliding and gliding shapes, and the stillness of the ocean night was clamorous with parrot-like cries. The lightning had ceased, but the darkness was fast deepening, and overhead the stars were beginning to languish in the projected dimness of the growing mass of cloud that, now that there was no play of violet fire upon it, was indistinguishable in its own dumb, brooding obscurity.

'Whatever is to come will happen on a sudden,' said I.

We neither of us cared to keep the deck now that the Captain had arrived, and descending the ladder, we entered the cabin. Under other conditions I should have been willing, and indeed anxious, to assist the crew, but now I was resolved not to touch a rope, to maintain and present as sullen a front as I could contrive, to hold apart with Helga, to mark my resentment by my behavior, and so, perhaps-but God knows I had no hope of it-to intimidate the fellow into releasing us by obliging him to understand that he had already gone a very great deal too far. There was much noise on deck; Mr. Jones was bawling from the forecastle, and Abraham from the waist, and the songs of the Malays might easily have passed for the cries of people writhing in pain. Apparently the Captain was alarmed by the indications of the glass and the look of the weather in the north-east, and was denuding his little ship as speedily as might be. His own voice began to sound now, and, though it was perfectly distinguishable, there was nothing nasal, bland, or greasy about it. On the contrary, his roars seemed to proceed from a pair of honest sealungs, as though what was nautical in him had been worked up by the appearance of the weather, and was proving too strong for the soapy exterior of his habitual manner.

'He can be natural when he forgets himself,' said I.

'It is quite possible that he swears at times,' said Helga.

'One touch of nature in the fellow would make me feel almost comfortable,' I exclaimed.

'He is not a true sailor: he never could be natural for any length of time,' said Helga.

The pattering of the naked feet of the crew was like the noise of a shower of rain. Helga seemed to be able to follow what was being done, as though she were on deck directing the crew.

They have furled this sail-they are reefing that sail-now they are hauling down such and such a jib-now they are stowing the mainsail, she would say, giving the canvas its proper names, and looking at me with a little smile in her liquid blue eyes, as though the interest in the sailors' work made her forget our troubles.

'Be as nautical as you like with me,' said I. 'I love to hear you pronounce the strange, uncouth language of the sea; but guard your lips before the Captain. The more sailorly you are, the more he will admire you.'

'What would make him hate me?' she exclaimed, with the light of the smile going out of her eyes, and her white brow contracting. 'How is he to be sickened?'

'Oh, what can you do? What can a pretty girl do that will not heighten the passion of a man who has fallen in love with her?'

'Call me pretty if you will,' said she, with a maidenly droop of her eyelids; 'but do not speak of me as a girl with whom anybody has fallen in love.'

'By George!' said I, starting and heaving a long sigh, with a look at the clock, the hands of which were now at nine, 'the road to Kolding gets longer and longer. But we shall measure it-we shall measure it yet, Helga!' I quickly added, heartily grieved by the sorrow that entered her face.

'What a strange dream has all this time been!' she half murmured, pressing her eyes. 'My father stood by my side last night; I felt his kiss-oh, Hugh! it was colder than the salt water outside.' She uttered an exclamation in Danish, with a little passionate shake of the head.

'I hope you are quite comfortable below,' exclaimed a much too familiar voice, and, looking up, I spied the long whiskers and smiling countenance of Captain Bunting framed in the open casement of the skylight.

Helga rallied as if to a shock, and stiffened into marble, motionless, and with a hardening of her countenance that I should have thought impossible to the gentle, ingenuous prettiness of her face.

'I fear,' he continued, talking through the skylight, 'that we are in for some nasty weather; but my barque is stripped and nearly ready for the affray. I am grieved not to be able to join you, Miss Nielsen. It is necessary that I should remain on deck. You are partaking of no refreshment. I will send Punmeamootty to you. Pray give him your orders.'

His whiskers floated out into the obscurity like two puffs of smoke, and he called, but in genteel accents, for Helga was now listening, and he knew it, to Abraham to send Punmeamootty 'to wait upon his guests in the cabin.' A moment after his whiskers reappeared.

'I have to beg, Miss Nielsen, that you will consider yourself mistress here. And before you withdraw to rest-and, whatever may happen, pray slumber securely, for I shall be watching the ship-may I entreat you to occupy Mr. Jones's berth, which you will find so very much more airy and comfortable than the dark, confined steerage?'

'I am quite satisfied with my accommodation, thank you,' she answered, without looking up.

He youthfully wagged his head in reproach of what his manner seemed to consider no more than an enchanting girlish capriciousness, and adding, 'Well, I entreat you both to make yourselves thoroughly at home,' he disappeared.

Punmeamootty arrived. He entered soundlessly as a spirit, and with the gliding movements that one could imagine of a phantom. I said to Helga:

'Abraham's philosophy shall be mine. My temper shall not prevent me from using our friend's larder. You asked just now what will sicken him. Let us eat and drink him up! Punmeamootty, when is the gale going to burst?'

'It will not be long, sah,' he answered, showing his teeth.

'Put the best supper you can upon the table. Have you nothing better than rum to drink?'

'Dere is wine, sah.'

'Yes, and very poor wine too. Have you no brandy?'

'Yes, sah, de Capt'n hab some choice brandy for sickness.'

'Put a bottle of it on the table, Punmeamootty, and be quick, like a good fellow as you are, to serve the food before this sweet little ship begins to kick up her heels.'

He showed his teeth again, with a glance at the skylight, following it on with a short-lived look of deep interest at Helga, then slipped away.

With wonderful nimbleness he had spread the cloth and put ham, salt beef, biscuit, and such things upon the table.

'Now draw that cork!' said I.

The pop of it brought the whiskers to the open skylight as if by magic.

'Quite right, quite right!' exclaimed the Captain. 'I hope, Miss Helga, this repast is of your ordering? What have you there, Punmeamootty?' he suddenly cried with excitement. 'That is brandy, I believe?'

'I ordered it!' I called out in a sullen voice.

'You will handle it tenderly, if you please,' said he, with a trifle of asperity in his speech. 'It is a fine cordial brandy, and I have but three bottles of it.'

I returned no answer, and he vanished.

'Upon my word, I believe Abraham is right, after all!' said I, with a laugh. 'Now, Helga, to punish him, if the road to his sensibility lie through ham and beef!'

She feigned to eat merely to please me, as I could see. Though I was not very hungry, I made a great business of sharpening my knife, and fell to the beef and ham with every appearance of avidity, not doubting that we should be furtively surveyed from time to time by the Captain, who could peep at us unseen without trouble as he passed the skylight, and who could very well overhear the clatter of dishes, the sharpening of my knife, and my calls to the steward, so silent did the night continue, as though there rested some great hush of expectancy upon the ocean.

I filled a bumper of brandy-and-water, and exclaimed in a loud voice:

'Here's to our speedy release, Helga! But if that is not to happen, then here's to the safest and swiftest passage this crazy old bucket is capable of making. And here's to proceedings hereafter to be taken!'

The coloured steward stood looking on with a grin of wonder.

'Capital brandy, this, Punmeamootty!' I sang out in accents that might have been heard upon the forecastle. 'Another drop, if you please! Thank you! I will help myself.'

A mere drop it was, for I had had enough; but I took care by my posture to persuade an eye surveying me from above that I was not sparing the bottle.

'You may clear away, Punmeamootty; and if you can find a cigar I shall feel obliged by your bringing it to me.'

'Well, and how are we getting on?' exclaimed the Captain, bending his head into the skylight.

'We have supped, thank you,' I answered haughtily and coldly. 'Punmeamootty, a cigar, if you please!'

The Captain's head vanished.

'Me no sabbee where the Capt'n him keep his cigar,' said Punmeamootty.

'Ransack his cabin!' said I loudly.

The fellow shook his head, but there was enjoyment in his grin, with an expression of elation in his eyes that borrowed a quality of fierceness from the singularly keen gleam which irradiated their dusky depths. I was about to speak, when Helga raised her hand.

'Hark!' she cried.

I bent my ear, and caught a sound resembling the low moan of surf heard at a distance.

'More than a capful of wind goes to the making of that noise,' said I.

A bright flash of lightning dazzled upon the skylight and eclipsed the cabin-lamp with its blinding bluish glare. A small shock of thunder followed. I heard the Captain cry out an order; the next minute the skylight was hastily closed and a tarpaulin thrown over it.

'Bring me my oilskins, Punmeamootty!' shouted the Captain down the companionway. The man ran on deck with the things.

'Can that be rain?' cried Helga.

Rain it was indeed! a very avalanche of wet, charged with immense hailstones. The roar of the smoking discharge upon the planks was absolutely deafening. It lasted about a couple of minutes, then ceased with startling suddenness, and you heard nothing but the surf-like moaning that had now gathered a deeper and a more thrilling note, mingled with the wild sobbing in the scuppers, and a melancholy hissing of wet as the water on the quarter-deck splashed from side to side to the light rolling of the barque. Yet fully another five minutes passed in quiet, while the growling of the thunder of the still distant storm-swept sea waxed fiercer and fiercer. It was as though one stood at the mouth of a tunnel and listened to the growing rattling and rumbling of a long train of goods waggons approaching in tow of a panting locomotive.

Then in a breath the wind smote the barque, and down she leaned to it. So amazingly violent was the angle, I do most truthfully believe that for the space of some twenty or thirty seconds the barque lay completely on her beam ends, as much so as if she were bilged high and dry upon a shoal, and there was a dreadful noise of water pouring in upon her deck from over the submerged lee main-deck rail.

Helga was to windward, and the table supported her, but the chair upon which I was seated broke away with me, and I fell sprawling upon my back amid a whole raffle of the contents of the table, which Punmeamootty had not yet removed. The full mess of it came headlong about me with a mighty smash; the beef, the ham, the bottle of brandy, now shivered into a thousand pieces, the jam pots, the biscuits, the knives and forks-all these things I lay in the midst of, and such was the heel of the deck that I could not stir a limb. Helga shrieked.

I cried out:

'I am not hurt; I'll rise when I can.' Someone was hoarsely bawling from the poop; but whatever the meaning of the yell might have been, it was immediately followed by a loud report resembling the blast of a twenty-four-pounder gun. 'There goes a sail!' I shouted. The vessel found life on being relieved of the canvas, whatever it was; there was a gradual recovery of her hull, and presently she was on a level keel, driving smoothly as a sleigh over a level plain of snow, but with such an infernal bellowing and hooting and ear-piercing whistling of wind accompanying her that there is nothing I can imagine to liken it to.

I waited awhile, and then, bidding Helga stay where she was, went on to the quarter-deck; but all betwixt the rails was of a pitch darkness, with a sort of hoariness in the blackness on either hand outside, rising from the foam, of which the ocean was now one vast field. I mounted the poop-ladder, but was blinded in a moment by the violence of the wind, that was full of wet, and was glad to regain the cabin; for I could be of no use, and there was no question to be asked nor answer to be caught at such a time.

* * *

It was about half-past nine when this gale took us, but such was the force and weight of it, so flattening and shearing was its scythe-like horizontal sweep, that no sea worth speaking of had risen till ten o'clock, and then, indeed, it was beginning to run high. All this while there had been no sound of human voices, but at this hour a command was delivered above our heads, and going on to the quarter-deck, I dimly discerned the figures of men hauling upon the forebraces; but they pulled dumbly; no song broke from them; they were silent as though in terror.

A little later on I knew by the motions of the barque that she had been brought to the wind and lay hove-to.

That few vessels would better know how to plunge and roll than this old Light of the World I might have guessed from her behaviour in quiet weather, when there was nothing but a slight swell to lift her. But I never could have conjectured how truly prodigious was her skill in the art of tumbling. She soared and sank as an empty cask might. She took every hollow with a shock that threatened to rend her bones into fragments, as though she had been hurled through the air from a mighty height; and when she swung up an acclivity, the sensation was that of being violently lifted, as by a balloon or by the grip of an eagle. Groans and cries rose from her interior as though she had a thousand miserable, perishing slaves-men, women, and children-locked up in her hold.

'This,' said I to Helga, 'is worse than the Anine.'

'Yet it was blowing harder on that Saturday night than it is now,' she answered, watching the mad oscillations of the cabin lamp with serene eyes and a mouth steadfast in expression. 'I have a greater dread of Captain Bunting's smile,' she continued, 'than of any hurricane that can blow across the ocean.' She looked at the clock. 'He is certain to arrive shortly. He is sure to find some excuse to torture me with his politeness. He will tease me to exchange my cabin. I think I will go to bed, Hugh.'

There was little temptation to remain up. I put my hand under her arm to steady the pair of us, and we passed on to the quarter-deck, where I found the hatch that led to our sleeping quarters shut. We lifted it, and looked into a blackness profounder than that of a coal-mine. On this I roared for Punmeamootty. I shouted four or five times at the top of my lungs, and then some voice bawled from over the rail of the deck above, 'What's wrong down there?' Who it was I could not tell; it was impossible to distinguish voices amid the hellish clamour of the wind roaring in the rigging with the sound of a tempest-swept forest. I took no notice, and bawled again for Punmeamootty, and, after a little, the poor coloured wretch came out of the darkness into the sheen of the cabin-light that feebly touched the quarter-deck, crawling on his hands and knees. He was soaked through, and when he stood up could scarcely keep his feet. Indeed, forward, the seas were sweeping the decks in sheets, and each time the vessel lifted her bows the water came roaring in a fury of foam to the cuddy front.

We were forced to put the hatch on again to keep the sea out of the ship till Punmeamootty came staggering out of the cuddy with a lantern. Helga then dropped below with amazing dexterity, and I handed the light down to her, requesting that she would hang it up and leave it burning, as I was in no mood to 'turn in' just then, wishing to see more of the weather before resting, and to smoke a pipe. I put the hatch on and re-entered the cuddy, followed by Punmeamootty.

'You seem half drowned!' said I.

'A sea knock me down, sah. Is dere danger, sah?'

'I hope not,' I answered. 'Do you feel equal to picking up that mess?' and I pointed to the broken china and bit of beef, and so on.

He turned a terrified eye upon them, staggering and swaying wildly, and then, as though he had not heard my question, he exclaimed, 'We all say dis storm come tro' Capt'n being wicked man! Tankee de Lor'! we hab no eat pork! Tankee de Lor'! we hab no eat pork!'

He bared his gleaming teeth, as though in the anguish of cold, and shook his small clenched fist at the skylight. I sat down and lighted a pipe, and, having been somewhat chilled by waiting out in the wet of the quarter-deck for Punmeamootty to bring the lantern, I slided and clawed my way round to Captain Bunting's locker for a bottle of rum that lay within. As I did this, the companion door opened, and down came the skipper. The wind and the wet had twisted his whiskers into lines like lengths of rope. I could have burst into a laugh at the sight of his singular face, framed in the streaming thatch and flannel ear-protectors of his sou'-wester. The water poured from his oilskins as he came to a stand at the end of the table, grabbing it, and looking about him.

'What's all that?' cried he, pointing with a fat forefinger to the mess on deck.

This was addressed to Punmeamootty, but I answered, flinging the surliest note I could manage into my voice, which I had to raise into a shout, 'An accident. This is a beast of a ship, sir! No barge could make worse weather of a breeze of wind.'

I let fall the lid of the locker, and sat upon it, poising the bottle of rum, and blowing a great cloud with my pipe.

'Where is Miss Nielsen?' he exclaimed.

'Gone to bed,' I answered. 'Punmeamootty, reach me a glass out of that rack.'

The man, in taking the tumbler, reeled to a violent heel of the deck, and let it fall.

'D-n it!' roared the Captain, 'you clumsy son of a bitch! What more damage is to be done?' His sudden passion made his fixed smile extraordinarily grotesque. 'Get a basket and pick up that stuff, and bear a hand!' he thundered. 'Has Miss Helga a light?'

'Yes,' I answered. 'I have seen to that.'

'But she may fall-she may let the lantern drop!'

'She is a better sailor than you,' I called out; 'she knows how to keep her feet. Punmeamootty! a tumbler, if you please, before you begin picking up that stuff.'

'I must see that Miss Nielsen's lantern is safe,' said the Captain; and he was coming forward as though to pass through the cuddy door. I sprang to my feet and confronted him on widely stretched legs.

'No man,' said I, 'enters Miss Nielsen's sleeping quarters while she and I remain in this ship.'

He stared at me, with twenty emotions working in his face. His countenance then changed. I perceived him glance at the bottle of rum that I held by the neck, and that I was just in the temper to let him have fair between his eyes had he attempted to shove past me. I believe he thought I had been drinking.

'I can assure you,' he exclaimed, with a violent reaching out of his mind, so to speak, in the direction of his regular and familiar blandness, 'that Miss Nielsen's privacy is as sacred to me as to you. Will you go below and see that her light is all right? It is a matter that as much concerns your safety as ours.'

Without answering him, I opened the locker, replaced the bottle, and continuing to puff out great clouds of smoke through the excitement under which I laboured-for I had been prepared for a hand-to-hand struggle with him, and my heart beat fast to the resolution of my temper-I quitted the cuddy, with a loud call to Punmeamootty to follow me and replace the hatch.

Whether the coloured steward put the hatch on, whether, indeed, he followed me as I bade him, I cannot tell. I found the lantern burning bravely and swinging fiercely under the beam, and extinguished it, and lay down completely clothed, with the exception of my boots, shrewdly guessing there would be little sleep for me that night.

That it blew at any time as hard as it had when we were aboard the Anine, I cannot say; enough that the dreadful maddened motions of the old vessel made a truly hideous gale of wind of the weather. Again and again she would tumble off the head of a sea and fall headlong into the yawn of water at the base, heeling over as she fell, till you would have believed the line of her masts parallel with the horizon, and strike herself such a mighty blow when she got to the bottom, that you listened, with a thumping heart, for a crackling and a rending noise of timbers to tell you that she was going to pieces like a child's house of cards. It was impossible to sleep; twice I was flung from my bunk, and came very near to breaking a limb. I called to Helga, and found her awake. I asked her how she did; but, silver-clear and keen as her voice was, I could not catch her answer.

It is likely that towards the small hours of the morning I now and again snatched a few minutes of sleep. From one of these brief spells of slumber I was aroused by the blow of a sea that thrilled like an electric shock through every plank and fastening of the vessel, and to my great joy I observed, as I thought, the faint gray of dawn colouring the dim and weeping glass of the scuttle. I immediately pulled on my boots and made for the hatch, but the cover was on and the darkness was as deep as ever it had been at midnight. I considered for a minute how I should make myself heard, and groping my way back to my berth, I took a loose plank, or bunk-board as it is called, from out of the sea-bedstead, and with it succeeded in raising such a thunder in the hollow cover that in a few minutes it was lifted. The homely, flat, ruddy-cheeked face of Jacob, his head clothed in a somewhat tattered yellow sou'-wester, which he had probably borrowed from one of his coloured mates forward, looked down upon me through the glimmering square of the aperture.

'Why, blowed, Mr. Tregarthen,' cried he, 'if Oi didn't think the barque was ashore! But ye'd have had to hammer much louder and much longer before escaping from that rat-trap, if it hadn't been for me a-sheltering of moyself under this 'ere break.'

It was a wild scene indeed to arrive on deck and suddenly view. Furious as was the behaviour of the barque, I could have got no notion of the weight of the surge from her capers. A huge swelling, livid, frothing surface-every billow looking to rear to the height of the maintop, where it was shattered and blown into a snowstorm-a heaven of whirling soot: this, in brief, was the picture. The vessel, however, was undamaged aloft. She was lying hove-to under a band of close-reefed topsail, which glanced like a sheet of foam against the stooping dismal dusk of the sky. None of the dark-skinned crew were visible. Jacob roared in my ear that they had been half wild with fear during the night.

'There's some sort of superstition a-working in them,' he shouted; 'they've been a-praying and a-praying horrible, arter their fashion. Lucky for the ship that she was snugged afore the storm busted. Them poor covies ain't agoing to save their lives when the call comes for them to live or perish.'

'Who has the watch?' said I.

'The mate,' he answered.

I looked at my watch, and was astonished to find that it was after eight. I had believed the hour to be daybreak, but, indeed, it was surprising that any light at all should have had power to sift through that storm-laden sky. Helga at this moment showed in the hatch. I took her hand. She looked pale, but her mouth was firm as she swept the boiling, swollen scene with her gaze, holding the deck with feet that seemed to float above the planks.

'What a night it has been!' she cried. 'This is a bad ship for bad weather. Hour after hour I have been thinking that she was going to pieces!'

I told Jacob to replace the hatch-cover, and the girl and I entered the cuddy, as it was impossible to converse in the open; while, spite of the parallel on which we reeled, the weight of the wind carried an edge as of a Channel January blast in it. In the comparative shelter of the interior we were able to talk, and I told her how I had behaved to the Captain on the previous night.

'Nothing that we can do,' said she, 'can signify while this weather lasts!'

'No, indeed!' I exclaimed. 'We must now pray for the ship to live. Our leaving her is made a twopenny consideration of by this gale.'

She rose to look at the tell-tale compass, and returned to my side with a look of concern and a sad shake of the head.

'This must end our dream of Santa Cruz,' said she.

'It was an idle dream at the best,' I answered.

'Unless it should result in disabling the barque!' she continued. She added, with a little passion, as she looked through the cuddy window on to the quarter-deck: 'I wish all three masts would go overboard!'

'Leaving the hull sound,' said I.

'Yes, yes, leaving the hull sound. I would be content to roll about in this hateful vessel for a whole fortnight, if I could be sure of being taken off at the end. Anything, anything to terminate this cruel, this ridiculous captivity!'

As these words left her lips, the Captain came down the companion-steps. He paused on seeing us, as though he had supposed the cuddy empty, and was ashamed to be seen in that figure. The dried white salt lay like flour in his eyes, his whiskers were mere rags of wet hair; a large globule of salt water hung at the end of his nose, like a gem worn after the Eastern fashion. He struggled along to where we sat, and extended his hand to Helga. In his most unctuous manner, that contrasted ludicrously with his streaming oilskins, he expressed the hope that she had slept well, lamented the severity of the gale, for her sake, but assured her there was no danger, that the barque was making noble weather of it, and that he expected the wind to moderate before noon. He held her hand while he spoke, despite her visible efforts to withdraw it from his grasp. He then addressed me:

'I have to apologize,' he exclaimed, 'for a little exhibition of temper last night. I employed an expletive which I am happy to think has not escaped me for years. The provocation was great-the anxieties of the gale-the loss of a foretopmast-staysail-the ruined crockery on the deck-a bottle of my valuable cordial-brandy wasted-Punmeamootty's somewhat insolent stupidity: the most pious mind might be reasonably forgiven for venting itself in the language of the forecastle, under the irritation of so many trials! But I offer you my apologies, Mr. Tregarthen, and I hope, sir, that you slept well!'

I answered him coldly and with averted eyes, being now resolved to persevere in my assumption of contemptuous dislike, which I also desired he should believe was animated by a determination to punish him when I got ashore.

He went to his cabin to refresh himself, first taking care to inform us, with a large smile, that he had spent the whole of the night on deck in looking after the vessel, 'whose safety,' he exclaimed, with a significant leer at Helga, 'has been rendered extraordinarily precious to me since Monday last.'

I now told her-for I had forgotten the incident-how our oily friend had whipped out a small oath on the previous night.

'So, then, he has humanized himself to you?' said she, laughing.

'It is the only symptom of sincerity I have observed in him,' I exclaimed.

He reappeared presently, soaped, shining, and smiling, with dried whiskers floating smoke-like on either hand a purple satin cravat. But the breakfast was to be a poor one that morning. The cook, it seems, could not keep the galley fire alight, and we had to make the best meal we could off a tin of preserved meat and some biscuit and wine-and-water. The Captain was profusely apologetic to Helga, and unctuously ascribed the poverty of the meal to me, who, he said with an air of jocosity, was the cause of half a ham and an excellent piece of beef being rendered unfit for the table. I made no answer to this. Indeed, Helga and I sat like mutes at that table; but the Captain talked abundantly, almost wholly addressing himself to the girl. In truth, it was now easy to see that the unfortunate man was head over ears in love with her. His gaze was a prolonged stare of admiration, and he seemed to find nothing in her behaviour to chill or repel him. On the contrary, the more she kept her eyes downwards bent, the colder and harder grew her face, the more taciturn she was-again and again not vouchsafing even a monosyllabic answer to him-the more he warmed towards her, the more he encroached in his behaviour. If he had any sensibility, it was armour-clad by complacency. I never could have believed that vanity had such power as I here found to sheath so impenetrably the human understanding. 'Well,' thought I to myself, 'all this means a voyage for Helga, if not for me. Assuredly he'll not part with her this side of the Cape, and the fool's hope,' I thought, as I let my eyes rest on the grinning mask of his countenance, 'is that he will have won her long before he reaches the parallel of thirty-four degrees south, though he has to make the most of every calm and of every gale of wind to achieve his end.'

I will not attempt to follow the hours of that day. They were little more than a repetition of our experiences in the Anine. The Captain came and went, but for the most part Helga and I remained in the cabin. The gale somewhat moderated at noon, as the skipper had predicted; but it still blew too hard to make sail on the ship, and she lay hove-to in the trough, sickening me to the inmost recesses of my soul with her extravagant somersaults and prodigious falls and upheavals. Somewhere about half-past four that afternoon, on looking through the cuddy-window, I saw Jacob smoking a pipe in the shelter of the projection of the Captain's and mate's cabins. I thought I would keep him company, and, having cut up a pipe of tobacco for myself, I quitted Helga, who showed a disposition to doze, and joined the boatman.

The wind made a great howling aloft, and the thunderous wash of the breaking waters against the vessel's side put a wild note of storm into the shrieking and hissing and hooting of the rigging. But it was fairly calm in the recess, and we conversed very easily. I asked Jacob, while I pointed over the lee-rail at the huge, dark-green, froth-laced backs of the seas rushing from the ship in headlong race, what would be his thoughts of this weather if he were aboard the Early Morn.

'Why, the lugger 'ud be doing as well as this here bucket, any way,' said he.

'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'will think that you are not half grateful enough for your deliverance.'

'He is a proper gentleman!' he exclaimed. 'Abraham swears there ain't the likes of him afloat for politeness; but his crew ben't of Abey's mind, I'm afraid. Looks to me as if there's going to be trouble.'

'Anything fresh happened?' I asked.

'It's all along of this matter of sarving out pork to them chaps as won't eat it, Mr. Tregarthen. The mate gave 'em pork again to-day. There ain't no galley fire alight, so it's all the same to them coloured chaps whether it be pork or beef. But it's the principle of it what's a-sticking in their gizzards. Nakier says to me, "It would be allee de same if de water boil," says he, "for it is eider pork or no meat," by which he sinnified that if so be as it was fine weather and the galley fire goin', the men's dinner to-day 'ud be pork or nothen. Now, Mr. Tregarthen, Oi allow that they don't mean to keep all on enduring of this here treatment.'

'What have you noticed to make you suppose this?' said I, with a glance along the deserted decks, dark with sobbing wet, and often shrouded forwards by vast showers of flying spray.

'Well,' he answered, 'all the darkies has been a-sitting below saving the chap at the wheel, there being nothen for them to do on deck. I was in the fok'sle when Nakier comes down and tells the men that it was to be pork again. I couldn't understand him, for he spoke his own language, but guessed what was up when I heerd the hullabaloo his words raised. They all began to sing out together in a sort of screeching voice like the row made by a crowd of women a-quarrelling and a-pulling the hair out of each other's heads up a halley. Some skipped about in their rage as though there was a fiddle going. One chap, him with a face like a decayed lemon, he outs with his knife and falls a-stabbing of the atmosphere; and Oi tell ye, Mr. Tregarthen, when I saw that I just drawed my legs up into my bunk and tried to make myself as little as possible, with the hope of escaping his hobservation, for damme! thought I, if that there article's agoing to run amuck, as I've heerd tell the likes of him is in the habit of doing, strike me dark, thinks Oi, if I ben't the fust man he'll fall foul on!'

'What was said?' I asked.

'Why, ask yourself the question, sir! What do monkeys say when they start a-yelling. Who's to know what they said?'

'How do you know, then, that it was the serving out of pork again that excited them?' said I.

'Whoy, that there Nakier told me so arterwards.'

'Ha!' I exclaimed; 'and for how long did they go on shrieking, as you say, and brandishing their knives?'

'It was over wonderful soon,' he answered. 'Nakier looked on whilst they was all a-shouting together, then said something, and it was like blowing the head off a pint o' ale-nothen remained but flatness. They just stood and listened whilst Nakier spouted, and ye should ha' seen 'em a-nodding and a-grimacing, and brandishing their arms and slapping their legs; but they never said nothen; they just took and listened. Tell 'ee, Mr. Tregarthen, the suddenness of it, and the looks of 'em, was something to bring the pusperation out of the pores of a Polar bear.'

'What does Abraham think?' said I.

'Whoy, I dunno how it is, he don't seem to obsarve-appears to find nothen to take to heart. He's growed a bit consequential, being now what the skipper would call a orficer, and though he sleeps forrard his feelings is aft. 'Tis mere growling, he thinks, with the fellows. But there's more 'n that,' said he, striking a match and catching the flame of it in his clasped hand, and lighting his pipe as easily as if there were not a breath of air stirring.

'The lunatic of a Captain has eyes in his head,' said I, thinking aloud rather than conversing. 'If he can't see the mischief his mad notion of conversion is breeding, it is not for me to point it out. In fact, I heartily wish the Malays would seize the barque and sail her to Madeira or the Canaries. Is it not abominable that Miss Nielsen and I should be carried away to the Cape of Good Hope against our will by that long-whiskered rogue?' signifying the Captain by a backward motion of my head at the cabin.

'Abraham was a-telling me about this here traverse. The skipper's gone and fallen in love with the young lady, ain't he?' said Jacob, with a grin overspreading his flat face.

'Yes,' said I, 'and hopes by keeping her aboard to win her heart. The dolt!'

'Dunno about dolt, sir!' exclaimed Jacob. 'She's a nice-looking young gal, is Miss Nielsen, and, I allow, just the sort of wife as a shipmaster would live heasy vith.'

'You argue as vilely as Abraham,' said I, looking at him angrily. 'Will you pretend that this Captain is not acting outrageously in detaining the young lady on board his ship-imprisoning her, in short-for that is what it comes to?'

A little look of intelligence gave a new expression to the flat-faced fellow's smile as he respectfully surveyed me.

'Well, sir-I don't blame you, I can't blame you,' he exclaimed. 'I've kep' company myself. I was for five year along with as nice a gal as was ever seen in Deal, a-courting and a-courting, and always too pore to git spliced. I know what the passion of jealousy is. She took up with a corporal of Marines, and, I tell ye, I suffered. It came roight, then it went wrong again, and it ended in her marrying a measly little slice of a chap, named Billy Tusser, who'd saved a bit out o' sprattin' and hovellin'. I can't blame 'ee, sir.'

It was not a matter to pursue with this worthy man, whose small intelligence lay too deep to be worth boring for; so I dropped the subject, and talked afresh of the coloured crew, and continued lingering till I could not have told how long our chat lasted. Though the gale was much less hard than it had blown down from noon, it was still a very violent wind, and the sea as wild as ever it had been, with the shadow of the evening now to add a darker tinge of gloom to the whirl of stooping, sooty heaven, under which every head of surge broke like a flash of ghastly light. The vessel was a strangely desolate picture-not a living creature to be seen forward, the decks half drowned, water sluicing white off the forecastle rim, or blowing up into the wind from off that raised deck in bursts of crystalline smoke, like corkscrew leapings of fine snow to the hurl of a blast roaring across a wintry moor. The black gear curved black with wet: again and again the vessel would pitch into the head sea till the spreading froth made by the massive plunge of her round bows rose to her forecastle rail. I had had enough of the cold and the wet; the cheerless picture of the barque and the ocean, too, was unspeakably depressing, and, with a glance round at the near horizon of broken creaming waters on which nothing showed, I bestowed a nod of farewell on Jacob, and re-entered the cuddy.

Captain Bunting was sitting close to Helga. The light was so weak in this interior that I had to peer a little to make sure that it was the Captain, for the dim figure might well have been the mate's. Helga was at the extreme end of the locker, as though she had uneasily worked her way from his side while they sat; but he had followed, and was now close, and her next and only step to get rid of him must be to rise. He was addressing her very earnestly when I entered; his whiskers floated from his cheeks as he bent towards her. Though the cuddy was charged with the complaining sounds of the labouring fabric, speech was very easy within it, nor was it necessary to raise the voice. Indeed, the interior had the effect of a hush upon my ears, coming as I did fresh from the shriek and thunder of the weather out on deck.

On seeing me the Captain instantly broke off, sat up, and called out:

'Well, and how are things looking on deck?'

Helga rose and went to the little window against the door.

'The weather could not be worse,' I answered, with the air and tone of sullenness I had resolved on. 'Your ship is too old and squab for such a conflict.'

'She is old, but she is a stout ship,' he answered. 'She will be afloat when scores of what you might consider beauties have vanished.'

'I think not,' said I, looking towards Helga, and wondering what the man had been saying to her.

'Let us hope,' he exclaimed, lifting a great pilot coat from the locker and struggling into it, 'that the necessity for your remaining here will not last very much longer. I should have expected handsomer treatment at your hands, Mr. Tregarthen.'

'I do not know what you can find to base such an expectation on,' I cried. 'Your detention of us is cruel, and, as I hope and believe, punishable. But there is no good in discussing that matter with you here and now. I have merely to beg that we may be as strangers while we are so unfortunate as to be together in the same ship.'

He drew his sou'-wester down upon his head, surveying me meanwhile; but I witnessed no malevolence in his regard; indeed, I may say, no trace of temper. His enduring smile lay broad with such expansion, indeed, as gave an air of elation to his face.

'No,' said he, wagging his head, while he slipped the elastic band of his sou'-wester behind his whisker; 'we will not live together as strangers, as you desire. Brotherly love is still practicable, and nothing that you can say or do, my young friend, shall dissuade me from cultivating it. That we shall be long together I do not believe,' he added, with a significance that astonished me and sent my eyes askant at Helga, whose back was still upon us. 'Meanwhile, endeavour to be contented. To have content is to have all, and to have all is to be richer than the richest.'

He inclined his sou'-westered head in an odd benedictory, grotesque nod, or bow, and, with a half-pause in his manner as though he would call some speech to Helga, turned on his heel and went on deck.

'What has he been saying, Helga?'

She looked round, and, finding the Captain gone, came to my side and locked her fingers upon my arm. She had drawn to me with a pale face, but the blood flushed her throat and cheeks as she let fall her eyes from mine. I had never before thought her so sweet as she showed at that moment. She was without a hat, and her short fair hair glimmered on her head in the gathering gloom of the evening with a sheen like the glancing of bright amber. My memory gave me a thought full of beauty-a wild caprice of sentiment at such a time:

'The freshness of new hay is on thy hair,

And the withdrawing innocence of home

Within thine eye.'

'What has he been saying to you, Helga?'

'That he loves me,' she answered, now fixing her artless, tender gaze upon me, though her blush lingered.

'A fine time to tell you such a thing! Does that sort of sea-captain wait for a gale of wind to propose to a girl?' I exclaimed, with a sudden irritation of jealousy tingling through me, and I looked at her closely and suspiciously.

'I wanted to be angry, but could not,' said she. 'I hate the man, yet I could not be angry with him. He spoke of his daughter-he did not talk through his nose-he did not cant at all. Is "cant" the right word? I felt sorry; I had not the heart to answer him in rudeness, and to have risen and left him whilst he was speaking would have been rudeness.'

I made a slight effort to disengage my arm from her clasp.

'He told me-no doubt you heard him,' said I-'he told me he believed there would be no necessity to keep me long. He is a clever man-a shrewd man. Well, after this I shall believe in all the proverbs about women.'

'What do you mean?' she exclaimed in a startled voice, letting fall her hands and staring at me.

'What do you mean?'

'Why, that I am sorry for the man, and hate him.'

'Oh! if you keep sorry long you will soon cease to hate him.'

'No, no!' she cried with a little passion, making as if to clasp my arm afresh, and then shrinking. 'I could not help his coming here and speaking to me.'

'That is true.'

'Why are you angry?'

Her gaze pleaded, her lips twitched, even as she looked at me her blue eyes filled. Her grieved, pretty face, her wistful, tender, tearful face, must have transformed my temper into impassioned pity, into self-reproach, into keen self-resentment, even had there been solid ground for vexation. I took her hand and lifted it to my lips.

'Forgive me; we have been much together. Our association and your father's dying words make me think of you as mine until-until-the long and short of it is, Helga, I am jealous!'

An expression of delight entered and vanished from her face. She stood thoughtfully looking down on the deck. Just then Punmeamootty entered to prepare the table for supper, and Helga again went to the cabin window and stood looking out, lightly, with unconscious ease and grace, swaying to the stormy heave of the deck, with her hands clasped behind her in a posture of meditation.

* * *