CHAPTER III. A 'LONGSHORE QUARREL.

We passed the afternoon in this way. Jacob was forward, sleeping; Thomas's turn at the helm had come round again; and Abraham lay over the lee rail, within grasp of the foresheet, lost in contemplation of the rushing waters.

'Where and when is this experience of ours going to end?' said I to Helga as we sat chatting.

'How fast are we travelling?' she asked.

'Between eight and nine miles an hour,' I answered.

'This has been our speed during the greater part of the day,' she said.
'Your home grows more and more distant, Hugh; but you will return to it.'

'Oh, I fear for neither of us, Helga,' said I. 'Were it not for my mother, I should not be anxious. But it will soon be a week since I left her, and, if she should hear that I was blown away out of the bay in the _Anine_, she will conclude that I perished in the vessel.'

'We must pray that God will support her and give her strength to await your return,' said she, speaking sadly, with her eyes bent down.

What more could she say? It was one of those passages in life in which one is made to feel that Providence is all in all, when the very instinct of human action in one is arrested, and when there comes upon the spirit a deep pause of waiting for God's will.

I looked at her earnestly as she sat by my side, and found myself dwelling with an almost loverlike pleasure upon the graces of her pale face, the delicacy of her lineaments, the refinement of prettiness that was heightened into something of dignity, maidenly as it was, by the fortitude of spirit her countenance expressed.

'Helga,' said I, 'what will you do when you return to Kolding?'

'I shall have to think,' she answered, with the scarcely perceptible accent of a passing tremor in her voice.

'You have no relatives, your father told me.'

'No; none. A few friends, but no relatives.'

'But your father has a house at Kolding?'

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