ull of that pretty Mrs. Ogilvy. He has been flirting with her
desperately ever since we left Bombay, and to-morrow he knows he will
lose her for ever. His mind isn't occupied with the navigation at all;
what HE is thinking of is how soon his watch will be over, so that he
may come down off the bridge on to the quarter-deck to talk to her.
Don't you see she's lurking over yonder, looking up at the stars and
waiting for him by the compass? Poor child! she has a bad husband, and
now she has let herself get too much entangled with this empty young
fellow. I shall be glad for her sake to see her safely landed and out of
the man's clutches."

As she spoke, the first officer glanced down towards Mrs. Ogilvy, and
held out his chronometer with an encouraging smile which seemed to say,
"Only an hour and a half more now! At twelve, I shall be with you!"

"Perhaps you're right, Hilda," I answered, taking a seat beside her and
throwing away my cigar. "This is one of the worst bits on the French
coast that we're approaching. We're not far off Ushant. I wish
the captain were on the bridge instead of this helter-skelter,
self-conceited young fellow. He's too cock-sure. He knows so much about
seamanship that he could take a ship through any rocks on his course,
blindfold--in his own opinion. I always doubt a man who is so much at
home in his subject that he never has to think about it. Most things in
this world are done by thinking."

"We can't see the Ushant light," Hilda remarked, looking ahead.

"No; there's a little haze about on the horizon, I fancy. See, the stars
are fading away. It begins to feel damp. Sea mist in the Channel."

Hilda sat uneasily in her deck-chair. "That's bad," she answered; "for
the first officer is taking no more heed of Ushant than of his latter
end. He has forgotten the existence of the Breton coast. His head is
just stuffed with Mrs. Ogilvy's eyelashes. Very pretty, long eyelashes,
too; I don't deny it; but they won't help him to get through the narrow
channel. They say it's dangerous."

"Dangerous!" I answered. "Not a bit of it--with reasonable care. Nothing
at sea is dangerous--except the inexplicable recklessness of navigators.
There's always plenty of sea-room--if they care to take it. Collisions
and icebergs, to be sure, are dangers that can't be avoided at times,
especially if there's fog about. But I've been enough at sea in my time
to know this much at least--that no coast in the world is dan