kled sides of the swell--that grew heavier as we widened the
offing--with the sheering, hissing sweep that one notices in a steam
launch. Grace lay on a lee-locker, and as the weather rolls of the
little _Spitfire_ were small there was no fear of my sweetheart
slipping off the couch. She rested very comfortably, and slept as
soundly as though in her own bed in times before she had known me,
before I had crossed her path to set her heart beating, to trouble her
slumbers, to give a new impulse to her life and to colour, with hues of
shadows and brightnesses what had been little more than the drab of
virgin monotony.

These poetical thoughts occurred to me as I stood gazing at her awhile
to make sure that she slept; then finding the need of refreshment, I
softly mixed myself a glass of soda and brandy, and lighting a pipe in
the companion-way, that the fumes of the tobacco might not taint the
cabin atmosphere, I stepped on to the deck.

And now I must tell you here that my little dandy yacht, the
_Spitfire_, was so brave, staunch, and stout a craft that, though I am
no lover of the sea in its angry moods, and especially have no relish
for such experiences as one is said to encounter, for instance, off
Cape Horn, yet such was my confidence in her seaworthiness, I should
have been quite willing to sail round the world in her, had the
necessity for so tedious an adventure have arisen. She had been built
as a smack, but was found too fast for trawling, and the owner offered
her as a bargain. I purchased and re-equipped her, little dreaming
that she was one day to win me a wife. I improved her cabin
accommodation, handsomely furnished her within, caused her to be
sheathed with yellow metal to the bends, and to be handsomely
embellished with gilt at the stern and quarters, according to the
gingerbread taste of twenty or thirty years ago. She had a fine, bold
spring or rise of deck forward, with abundance of beam, which warranted
her for stability; but her submerged lines were extraordinarily fine,
and I cannot recollect the name of a pleasure craft afloat at that time
which I should not have been willing to challenge, whether for a fifty
or a thousand mile race. She was rigged as a dandy, a term that no
reader, I hope, will want me to explain.

I stood, cigar in mouth, looking up at her canvas and round upon the
dark scene of ocean, whilst, the lid of the skylight being a little way
open, I was almost within arm's reac