cabin,
such I call her room--a boudoir the French would name it--all hung
round with pale rose silk, and above that again an artist's pictures
upon a wall of cream. Little tables stood everywhere and women's
knick-knacks upon them; there were deep chairs which invited you to
sit, covered in silks and satins, and cushioned so that a big man might
be afraid of them.

Upon the mantel-shelf a clock from Paris swung a jewelled pendulum, and
candlesticks matched it on either side. A secretaire, littered over
with papers and bright with silver ornaments, had its back to the
seaward wall; a round window, cut in the rock above it, stood hidden by
curtains of the richest brocade. The carpet, I said, was from Turkey;
the mats from Persia. In the grate the wood-fire glowed warmingly. Ruth
Bellenden herself, the mistress of the room, capped the whole, and she
was gowned in white, with rubies and diamonds strung about her stately
neck, and all that air of proud command I had admired so much in
the days bygone. Aye, such a scene, believe me, as a grand London
drawing-room might show you any night of London's months you care to
name, and yet so different from that. And I, a plain sailor, found
myself thrust forward there to my confusion, yet feeling, despite it
all, that the woman I spoke to was woman at heart, as I was man. A few
days ago I had come to her to say, "You have need of me." To-night it
was her lot to answer me with my own words.

"Jasper," she said, her hand still on the switch of the lamp, "what
miracle brings you to this place?"

"No miracle, Miss Ruth," said I, "but a plain road, and five men's
necessity. We were dying on Ken's Island and we found a path under the
sea. It was starvation one way, surrender the other; I am here to tell
Mr. Czerny everything and to trust my life to him."

Now, she heard me almost with angry surprise; and coming forward into
the light she stood before me with clasped hands and heated face.

"No," she said, and her "No" was a thing for a man to hear. "No, no;
you shall never tell my husband that. And, oh, Jasper!" she cried upon
it, "how ill you look--how changed!"

"My looks don't tell the truth," said I, not wishing to speak of
myself; "I am up and down like a barometer in the tropics. The plain
fact is, Miss Ruth, that the ship's gone, clean gone! I gave Mister
Jacob the sure order to stand by us for three days, and that he didn't
do. It means, then, that he couldn't. I greatly fe