edge as of a Channel January blast in it. In the comparative shelter of the interior we were able to talk, and I told her how I had behaved to the Captain on the previous night.

'Nothing that we can do,' said she, 'can signify while this weather lasts!'

'No, indeed!' I exclaimed. 'We must now pray for the ship to live. Our leaving her is made a twopenny consideration of by this gale.'

She rose to look at the tell-tale compass, and returned to my side with a look of concern and a sad shake of the head.

'This must end our dream of Santa Cruz,' said she.

'It was an idle dream at the best,' I answered.

'Unless it should result in disabling the barque!' she continued. She added, with a little passion, as she looked through the cuddy window on to the quarter-deck: 'I wish all three masts would go overboard!'

'Leaving the hull sound,' said I.

'Yes, yes, leaving the hull sound. I would be content to roll about in this hateful vessel for a whole fortnight, if I could be sure of being taken off at the end. Anything, anything to terminate this cruel, this ridiculous captivity!'

As these words left her lips, the Captain came down the companion-steps. He paused on seeing us, as though he had supposed the cuddy empty, and was ashamed to be seen in that figure. The dried white salt lay like flour in his eyes, his whiskers were mere rags of wet hair; a large globule of salt water hung at the end of his nose, like a gem worn after the Eastern fashion. He struggled along to where we sat, and extended his hand to Helga. In his most unctuous manner, that contrasted ludicrously with his streaming oilskins, he expressed the hope that she had slept well, lamented the severity of the gale, for her sake, but assured her there was no danger, that the barque was making noble weather of it, and that he expected the wind to moderate before noon. He held her hand while he spoke, despite her visible efforts to withdraw it from his grasp. He then addressed me:

'I have to apologize,' he exclaimed, 'for a little exhibition of temper last night. I employed an expletive which I am happy to think has not escaped me for years. The provocation was great—the anxieties of the gale—the loss of a foretopmast-staysail—the ruined crockery on the deck—a bottle of my valuable cordial-brandy wasted—Punmeamootty's 

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