y contrast with the hue of her cheeks,
sparkled with alarm. She swept them round the cabin, as though she
expected to behold one knows not what sort of horror, then came to my
side and linked my arm tightly in hers.

"Oh, Herbert, tell me the truth. What has happened?"

"Nothing serious, darling. Do you not feel that we are afloat and
sailing bravely?"

"But just now? Did not the yacht turn over? Something was broken on
deck, and the men began to shriek."

"And so did you, Grace," said I, trying to smile.

"But if we should be drowned?" she cried, drawing closer to me, and
fastening her sweet, terrified eyes upon my face.

I shook my head, still preserving my smile, though Heaven knows, had my
countenance taken its expression from my mood, it must have shown as
long as the yacht herself. I could see her straining her ears to
listen, whilst her gaze--large, bright, her brows arched, her lips
parted, her breast swiftly heaving--roamed over the cabin.

"What is that noise of thunder, Herbert?"

"It is the wind," I answered.

"Are not the waves getting up? Oh! feel this!" she cried, as the yacht
rose with velocity and something of violence to the under-running hurl
of a chasing sea, of a power that was but too suggestive of what we
were to expect.

"The _Spitfire_ is a stanch, noble little craft," said I, "built for
North Sea weather. She is not to be daunted by anything that can
happen hereabouts."

"But what _has_ happened?" she cried, irritable with alarm.

I was about to utter the first reassuring sentence that occurred to my
mind, when the companion was slid a little way back, and I just caught
sight of a pair of legs ere the cabin lamp was extinguished by such
another yell and blast of wind as had before nearly stretched me.
Grace shrieked and threw her arms round my neck; the cover was closed,
and the interior, instantly becalmed again.

"Who's that?" I roared.

"Me, sir," sounded a voice out of the blackness where the companion
steps stood; "Files, sir. The captain asked me to step below to report
what's happened. He dursn't leave the deck himself."

I released myself from my darling's clinging embrace and lighted the
lamp for the third time.

Files, wrapped in streaming oilskins, resembled an ebony figure over
which a bucket of dripping has been emptied, as he stood at the foot of
the steps with but a bit of his wet, grey-coloured face showing betwixt
the ear-flaps and under the fore-