o time to protest or to ask questions. And Juliette felt
herself passed on from one pair of strong arms to another, until she was
standing on the deck under the humming rigging, surrounded by men who
seemed huge in their gleaming oil-skins.

"This way, mademoiselle," said one, who was even larger than the others,
in English, of which she understood enough to catch his meaning. "I will
take you to your father. Show a light this way, one of you."

His fingers closed round her arm, and he led her, unconscious of a
strength that almost lifted her from her feet, toward an open door,
where a lamp burnt dimly within. It smelt abominably of an untrimmed
wick, Juliette thought, and the next minute she was kissing her father,
who lay full length on a locker in the little cabin.

She asked him a hundred questions, and waited for few of the answers.
Indeed, she supplied most of them herself; for she was very quick and
gay.

"I see," she cried, "that your foot has been tied up by a sailor. He
has tried to mend it as if it were a broken spar. I suppose that was the
Captain who brought me to you, and then ran away again, as soon as he
could. Yes; I have Marie with me. She is telling them to be careful with
the luggage. I can hear her. I am so glad we had a case of fever at the
school. It was a lay sister, a stupid woman. But how lucky that I should
be at home just when you wanted me!"

She stood upright again, after deftly loosening the bandage round her
father's ankle, and looked at him and laughed.

"Poor, dear old papa," she said. "One sees that you want some one
to take care of you. And this cabin-oh! mon Dieu! how bare and
uncomfortable! I suppose men have to go to sea alone because they can
persuade no woman to go with them."

She pounced upon her father again, and arranged afresh the cushions
behind his back, with a little air of patronage and protection. Her back
was turned toward the door, when some one came in, but she heard the
approaching steps and looked quickly round the cabin walls.

"Heavens!" she exclaimed, in a gay whisper. "No looking-glass! One sees
that it is only men who live here."

And she turned, with smiling eyes and a hand upraised to her disordered
hair, to note the new-comer. It was Dormer Colville, who laid aside his
waterproof as he came and greeted her as an old friend. He had, indeed,
known her since her early childhood, and had always succeeded in keeping
pace with her, even in the rapid cha