g a hopeful word
or two to cheer and encourage him under the pang of parting, which it
was evident enough the poor lad felt keenly. Sibylla hung back until
all the others, the poor children included, had spoken their farewell,
and then she too advanced and held out her hand. She was very pale, and
the small shapely trembling hand which Ned grasped in his was icy cold;
but however keenly she may have felt the parting under such terrible
circumstances she contrived to maintain at least a semblance of outward
composure, though there was a tremor in her voice which she found it
quite impossible to control. She murmured a few low half-inarticulate
words of farewell, gave Ned's hand a slight involuntary pressure ere she
released it, and then hastily retreated to her state-room.

As for poor Ned, on releasing Sibylla's hand he turned and staggered out
of the cabin, looking like a man who had been suddenly struck a numbing
blow, and feeling as he might have felt had the saloon been a felon's
dock in which he had just received his death-sentence. This miserable
parting, though he had been constantly expecting it any time within the
previous fortnight, and though he honestly believed--as he had said--
that he was glad of it, now seemed to have come upon him with startling
suddenness, and it had called up with it an unexpected feeling of bitter
anguish for which he was wholly unprepared, and for which he found it
difficult to account. It was not, he thought, that he had conceived for
these people an exceptionally warm friendship; he had made many friends
during his sea-going career for whom he had felt quite as strong a
regard, yet when the time for it came he had been able to say farewell
with a cheery voice and a comparatively light heart. But now it seemed
altogether a different matter; though the sun still shone brilliantly,
as of old, and the warm soft wind still roughened the sapphire sea and
caused it to laugh and sparkle as joyously as ever, the whole world
looked dark, cheerless, and gloomy to him, and he felt as though he had
suddenly become the victim of some terrible calamity. In the endeavour
to get rid of the horrible feeling of depression which had thus
unaccountably seized upon him, Ned went and hunted up the boatswain, and
delivered Williams' order respecting the removal of the passengers'
baggage from the hold; after which he mounted the poop, on which
Williams had by this time stationed himself. But, actu