y
courage should have gone to love-making, I was plucking it up to sail as
near as I might to plain remonstrance! I little dreamt how the ghost of
every petty word was presently to return and torture me.

So it is that I can see her and hear her now on a hundred separate
occasions beneath the awning beneath the stars on deck below at noon
or night but plainest of all in the evening of the day we signalled
the Island of Ascension, at the close of that last concert on the
quarter-deck. The watch are taking down the extra awning; they are
removing the bunting and the foot-lights. The lanterns are trailed
forward before they are put out; from the break of the poop we watch the
vivid shifting patch of deck that each lights up on its way. The stars
are very sharp in the vast violet dome above our masts; they shimmer on
the sea; and our trucks describe minute orbits among the stars, for the
trades have yet to fail us, and every inch of canvas has its fill of the
gentle steady wind. It is a heavenly night. The peace of God broods upon
His waters. No jarring note offends the ear. In the forecastle a voice
is humming a song of Eva Denison's that has caught the fancy of the men;
the young girl who sang it so sweetly not twenty minutes since who
sang it again and again to please the crew she alone is at war with our
little world she alone would head a mutiny if she could.

"I hate the captain!" she says again.

"My dear Miss Denison!" I begin; for she has always been severe upon our
bluff old man, and it is not the spirit of contrariety alone which makes
me invariably take his part. Coarse he may be, and not one whom the
owners would have chosen to command the Lady Jermyn; a good seaman none
the less, who brought us round the Horn in foul weather without losing
stitch or stick. I think of the ruddy ruffian in his dripping oilskins,
on deck day and night for our sakes, and once more I must needs take his
part; but Miss Denison stops me before I can get out another word.

"I am not dear, and I'm not yours," she cries. "I'm only a
school-girl--you have all but told me so before to-day! If I were a
man--if I were you--I should tell Captain Harris what I thought of him!"

"Why? What has he done now?"

"Now? You know how rude he was to poor Mr. Ready this very afternoon!"

It was true. He had been very rude indeed. But Ready also had been at
fault. It may be that I was always inclined to take an opposite view,
but I felt bound to