istress, eagerly accepted M. Letourneur's invitation to pay
a visit to the reef but to her great disappointment Mrs. Kear at first
refused point-blank to allow her to leave the ship. I felt intensely
annoyed, and resolved to intercede in Miss Herbey's favour; and as I
had already rendered that self-indulgent lady sundry services which she
thought she might probably be glad again to accept, I gained my point,
and Miss Herbey has several times been permitted to accompany us across
the rocks, where the young girl's delight at her freedom has been a
pleasure to behold.

Sometimes we fish along the shore, and, then enjoy a luncheon in the
grotto, whilst the basalt columns vibrate like harps to the breeze.
This arid reef, little as it is, compared with the cramped limits of
the "Chancellor's" deck is like some vast domain; soon there will be
scarcely a stone with which we are not familiar, scarcely a portion of
its surface which we have not merrily trodden, and I am sure that when
the hour of departure arrives we shall leave it with regret.

In the course of conversation, Andre Letourneur one day happened to say
that he believed the island of Staffa belonged to the Macdonald family,
who let it for the small sum of 12 pounds a year.

"I suppose then," said Miss Herbey, "that we should hardly get more than
half-a-crown a year for our pet little island."

"I don't think you would get a penny for it, Miss Herbey; but are you
thinking of taking a lease?" I said, laughing.

"Not at present," she said; then added, with a half-suppressed sigh,
"and yet it is a place where I have seemed to know what it is to be
really happy."

Andre murmured some expression of assent, and we all felt that there was
something touching in the words of the orphaned, friendless girl who had
found her long-lost sense of happiness on a lonely rock in the Atlantic.

CHAPTER XIX.

NOVEMBER 6th to NOVEMBER 15th.--For the first five days after the
"Chancellor" had run aground, there was a dense black smoke continually
rising from the hold; but it gradually diminished until the 6th of
November, when we might consider that the fire was extinguished. Curtis,
nevertheless, deemed it prudent to persevere in working the pumps, which
he did until the entire hull of the ship, right up to the deck, had been
completely inundated.

The rapidity, however, with which the water, at every retreat of the
tide, drained off to the level of the sea, was an indicatio