poor chap's cry—the way they chucked him overboard——' He buried his eyes in his coat-sleeve. 'The cussed murderers!' he exclaimed, lifting his face, and looking savagely around.

'Come!' cried Abraham, 'if ye mean to come! What's your temper agoing to do for us?'

'I'll relieve you at four o'clock,' said I, looking at the timepiece, the hands of which stood at a quarter before two.

The men went on deck, and turning down the lamp—for the revelation of the light served as a violent irritant to the nerves on top of the fancy of the secret, fiery-eyed observation of us without—I seated myself beside Helga on a locker to whisper and to think.

The girl and I had passed through some evil, dark, and dangerous hours since we first came together in that furious Saturday night's gale; but never was the worst of them all comparable to this middle-watch through which we sat, for hard upon two hours of it, in gloom, in the ocean silence that lay upon the barque, imagining the movement of dark shapes in the blackness that came like a wall to the cabin-door, and the gleam of swiftly receding eyes peering at us through the cabin skylight. Regularly through the stillness sounded the combined tread of Abraham and his mate, over our heads, with sometimes a halt that almost startled the ear, while we could clearly catch the grumbling growling of their conversation as they passed the skylight on their way to and fro.

Yet, strangely enough—I am speaking for myself—the horror of the double assassination did not lie upon my spirit with the deadening weight I should have imagined as the effect of so shocking, sudden, and bloody a tragedy. That which might have been acute horror was subdued into little more than a dull and sickening consternation by perception of our own peril. Yet I would look at those berths lying on either side the cuddy front, as though from either one or the other of them the figure of the Captain or his mate must stalk! The stain upon the cabin-deck lay black as ink against the Captain's door. To think that that was all of him his barque now contained!

We sat whispering about the unhappy creature and his wretched subordinate; then our talk went to other matters. I told Helga we need not question that the intention of the crew was to cast the vessel away upon some part of the South African coast, near enough to Cape Town to enable them to trudge the distance, but too remote from civilization for the movements of the barque to be witnessed. That was their resolution, I 

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