of my lifeboat experiences, I could not help watching with a certain anxiety the headlong rush of foam to her counter, nor could I feel the wild, ball-like toss the strong Atlantic surge would give to our eggshell of a boat, without misgiving as to the sort of weather she was likely to make should such another storm as had foundered the Anine come down upon the ocean. I was also vexed to the heart by the speed at which we were driving, and by the assurance--I was seafarer enough to understand--that in such a lump of a sea as was now running there would be a very small probability indeed of our being able to board, or even to get alongside of, a homeward-bounder, though twenty vessels, close-hauled for England, should travel past us in an hour. How far were we to be transported into this great ocean before the luck of the sea should put us in the way of returning home? These were considerations to greatly subdue my spirits; and there was also the horror that memory brought when I glanced at the rushing headlong waters and thought of the raft.

I looked at Helga: her eyes were slowly sweeping the horizon, and on their coming to mine the tender blue of them seemed to darken to a gentle smile. Whatever her heart might be thinking of, assuredly no trace of the misgivings which were worrying me were discernible in her. The shadow of the grief that had been upon her face during the morning had returned with the passing away of the life the noble picture of the ship had kindled in her; but there was nothing in it to weaken in her lineaments their characteristic expression of firmness and resolution and spirit. Her tremorless lips lay parted to the sweep of the wind; her admirable little figure yielded to the bounding, often violent, jerking motions of the lugger with the grace of a consummate horsewoman, who is one with the brave swift creature she rides; her short yellow hair trembled under the dark velvet-like skin of her turban-shaped hat, as though each gust raised a showering of gold-dust about her neck and cheeks.

Yet I believe, had I been under sentence of death, I must have laughed outright at the spectacle of Abraham bobbing at the sun with an old-fashioned quadrant that might well have been in use for forty years. He stood up on straddled legs, with the aged instrument at his eye, mopping and mowing at the luminary in the south, and biting hard in his puzzlement and efforts at a piece of tobacco that stood out in his cheeks like a knob.

'He's a blazing long time in making height bells, hain't he, to-day!' said Jacob, addressing Abraham, and referring to the sun.

'He's all right,' answered Abraham, 

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