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 

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