ptain (if no time were lost)
declared himself still capable to save. Now James More had trysted in
Helvoet with his daughter, and the captain had engaged to call before
the port and place her (according to the custom) in a shore boat. There
was the boat, to be sure, and there was Catriona ready: but both our
master and the patroon of the boat scrupled at the risk, and the first
was in no humour to delay.

"Your father," said he, "would be gey an little pleased if we was to
break a leg to ye, Miss Drummond, let-a-be drowning of you. Take my way
of it," says he, "and come on-by with the rest of us here to Rotterdam.
Ye can get a passage down the Maes in a sailing scoot as far to the
Brill, and thence on again, by a place in a rattel-waggon, back to
Helvoet."

But Catriona would hear of no change. She looked white-like as she
beheld the bursting of the sprays, the green seas that sometimes poured
upon the forecastle, and the perpetual bounding and swooping of the boat
among the billows; but she stood firmly by her father's orders. "My
father, James More, will have arranged it so," was her first word and
her last. I thought it very idle and indeed wanton in the girl to be so
literal and stand opposite to so much kind advice; but the fact is she
had a very good reason, if she would have told us. Sailing scoots and
rattel-waggons are excellent things; only the use of them must first be
paid for, and all she was possessed of in the world was just two
shillings and a penny halfpenny sterling. So it fell out that captain
and passengers, not knowing of her destitution--and she being too proud
to tell them--spoke in vain.

"But you ken nae French and nae Dutch neither," said one.

"It is very true," says she, "but since the year '46 there are so many
of the honest Scots abroad that I will be doing very well, I thank you."

There was a pretty country simplicity in this that made some laugh,
others looked the more sorry, and Mr. Gebbie fall outright in a passion.
I believe he knew it was his duty (his wife having accepted charge of
the girl) to have gone ashore with her and seen her safe; nothing would
have induced him to have done so, since it must have involved the loss
of his conveyance; and I think he made it up to his conscience by the
loudness of his voice. At least he broke out upon Captain Sang, raging
and saying the thing was a disgrace; that it was mere death to try to
leave the ship, and at any event we could not cas