I watched her with astonishment and admiration. It would until now have seemed impossible to me that any mortal woman should have had in her the makings of so nimble and practised a sailor as I found her to be, with nothing, either, of the tenderness of girlhood lost in her, in speech, in countenance, in looks, spite of her boy's clothes. She examined the rod, and eyed me with a grave countenance.

'Does the water gain?' said I.

'There are two more inches of it,' she answered, 'than the depth I found in the hold last night when I first sounded. We ought to free her somewhat.'

'I am willing,' I exclaimed; 'but are you equal to such labour? A couple of hours should not make a very grave difference.'

'No, no!' she interrupted, with a vehemence that put her air of weariness to flight. 'A couple of hours would be too long to wait,' saying which she grasped the brake and we went to work as before.

No one who has not had to labour in this way can conceive the fatigue of it. There is no sort of shipboard work that more quickly exhausts. It grieved me to the soul that my associate in this toil should be a girl, with the natural weakness of her sex accentuated by what she had suffered and was still suffering; but her spirited gaze forbade remonstrance. She seemed scarcely able to stand when utter weariness forced her at last to let go of the brake. Nevertheless, she compelled her feeble hands again to drop the rod down the well. We had reduced the water to the height at which we had left it before, and, with a faint smile of congratulation, she made a movement towards the deck-house; but her gait was so staggering, there was such a character of blindness, too, in her posture as she started to walk, that I grasped her arm and, indeed, half carried her into the house.

She sat and rested herself for a few minutes, but appeared unable to speak. I watched her anxiously, with something of indignation that her father, who professed to love her so dearly, should not come between her and her devotion, and insist upon her resting. Presently she rose and walked to his cabin, telling me with her looks to follow her.

CHAPTER VI.

CAPTAIN NIELSEN.

Captain Nielsen, was veritably corpse-like in aspect viewed by the cold gray iron light sifting through the little windows out of the spray-shrouded air. The unnatural brightness of his eyes painfully defined the attenuation of his 

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