right trim for the posture in which she lay, having been pointed to the wind—the fore-yards on one tack, the main-yards on the other—when the gale came on to blow in the bay, and the braces had not since been touched. I walked with the girl to the entrance of the deck-house, the door of which faced forwards. She entered the structure and, while I waited outside, lighted a bull's-eye lamp, with which she rejoined me, and together we went forward to another house built abaft of the galley. This had been the place in which the crew slept. The carpenter's chest was here, and also the sounding-rod. We then went to the pumps, and while I held the lamp she dropped the rod down the sounding-pipe, drew it up and brought it to the light and examined it, and named the depth of water there was in the hold. I do not recollect the figure, but I remember that, though it was significant, there was nothing greatly to alarm us in it, seeing how heavily and how frequently the barque had been flooded with the seas, and how much of the water might have made its way from above.

I recount this little passage in a few lines, yet it forms one of the most sharp-cut of the memories of my adventure. The picture is before me as I write. I see the pair of us as we come to a dead stand, grasping each other for support, while the vessel rolls madly over on the slope of some huge hurtling sea. I see the bright glare from the bull's-eye lamp in the girl's hand, dancing like a will-o'-the-wisp upon the black flood betwixt the rails washing with the slant of the decks to our knees; I see her dropping the rod down the tube, coolly examining it, declaring its indication, while, to the flash of the lamplight, I catch an instant's glimpse of her face, shining out white—large-eyed, as it seemed to me—upon the blackness rushing in thunder athwart the deck.

She led the way into the deck-house. There was a small lantern wildly swinging at a central beam—my companion had lighted it when she procured the bull's-eye lamp—it diffused a good lustre, and I could see very plainly. It was just a plain, ordinary, shipboard interior, with three little windows of a side, a short table, lockers on either hand, and a sleeping-berth, or cabin, designed for the captain's use, aft; the companion-hatch, which led to the deck below, was betwixt the after-end of the cabin and the bulkhead of the berth, but the rapid glance I threw around speedily settled, as you may suppose, into a look—a long look—full of curiosity, surprise, and admiration, at the girl.

She stood before me dressed as a sailor lad, in a suit of pilot cloth and a red silk handkerchief round her throat; 

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