Indian Ocean, and I believe if even
Mrs. Barstow had been my wife, I should not have scrupled to make away
with her for a quart bottle of champagne."

CHAPTER IX

WE ARE MUCH OBSERVED

Our lunch consisted of cold fowl and ham and champagne; good enough
meat and drink, one should say, for the sea, and almost good enough,
one might add, for a pair of love-sick fugitives.

"How is your appetite, my darling?" said I.

"I think I can eat a little of that cold chicken."

"This is very handsome treatment, Grace. Upon my word, if the captain
preserves this sort of behaviour, I do not believe we shall be in a
great hurry to quit his ship."

"Is not she a noble vessel?" exclaimed Grace, rolling her eyes over the
saloon. "After the poor little _Spitfire's_ cabin! And how different
is this motion! It soothes me after the horrid tumbling of the last
two days."

"This is a very extraordinary adventure," said I, eating and drinking
with a relish and an appetite not a little heightened by observing that
Grace was making a very good meal. "It may not end so soon as we hope,
either. First of all, we have to fall in with a homeward-bound ship;
then she has to receive us; then she has to arrive in the Channel and
transfer us to a tug or a smack, or anything else which may be willing
to put us ashore; and there is always the chance of her _not_ falling
in with such a craft as we want, until she is as high as the
Forelands--past Boulogne, in short! But no matter, my own. We are
together, and that is everything."

She took a sip of the champagne that the steward had filled her glass
with, and said in a musing voice, "What will the people in this ship
think of me?"

"What they may think need not trouble us," said I. "I told Captain
Parsons that we were engaged to be married. Is there anything very
extraordinary in a young fellow taking the girl he is engaged to out
for a sail in his yacht, and being blown away, and nearly wrecked by a
heavy gale of wind?"

"Oh, but they will know better," she exclaimed, with a pout.

"Well, I forgot, it is true, that I told the captain we sailed from
Boulogne. But how is he to know your people don't live there?"

"It will soon be whispered about that I have eloped with you, Herbert,"
she exclaimed.

"Who's to know the truth if it isn't divulged, my pet?" said I.

"But it is divulged," she answered.

I stared at her. She eyed me wistfully as she continued: "I told Mrs.
Barstow