yo' eye on the glass, an' pitch in a shovel of coal evewy ten
minutes: she'll do the west."

So the new hand, satisfied that the gage was correct and the furnace
lively, lit his pipe, sat down, and began to jot in a note-book the
contents of his coat-pockets. The Spaniard's letters he could not read,
though he gathered that one of them was from a wife in Vallodolid, who
would travel overland early in January to meet her husband. But the
Englishman's correspondence was terribly explicit. A "heart-broken
mother" wrote from Liverpool that "Jack" had been shot during one of the
many cold-weather campaigns on the Indian frontier. "I have no news,
simply a telegram from the War Office. But of what avail to know how my
darling died. My tears are blinding me. You and I alone are left, and
you are thousands of miles away. May the Lord be merciful to me, a
widow, and bring you home to comfort me." Yet the knife which killed him
must have gone very near that letter.

Tollemache tried to grip his pipe in his teeth. He failed. It fell on
the iron floor.

"Oh, this is rotten!" he growled. "Why couldn't he have been spared? No
one would have missed me. I don't suppose Jennie would care tuppence."

The _Kansas_ rolled heavily. He waited a few seconds for the expected
shock, but she swung back to an even keel. Then he stooped to pick up
his pipe, and his mouth hardened.

"'Spared!' by gad!" he said. "What rot!" That roll of the ship was
caused by an experimental twist of the wheel. Courtenay, peering into
the darkness through the open window of the chart-house, saw that the
weather was clearing. He had evolved a theory, and, for want of a
better, he was determined to pursue it to a finish. The _Kansas_ was
being swiftly carried along in a strong and deep tidal current. Happily,
the wind followed the set of the sea, else there would be no chance of
success for his daring plan. His expedient was the desperate one of
keeping the vessel in the line of the current, and, if day broke before
he reached the coast, he would steer for any opening which presented
itself in the fringe of reefs which must assuredly guard the mainland.

With his hands grasping the taut and, in one sense, irresponsive
mechanism of a steering-wheel governed by steam, a sailor can "feel" the
movement of his ship, a seaworthy vessel being a living thing, obedient
as a docile horse to the least touch of the rein. But, in the unlikely
event o