herself clearly understood
by Seraphina. Moreover, women were so helpless--so very helpless in
such matters. That is why she was speaking to me. She did not doubt my
sincerity at the present time--but there was, humanly speaking, a long
life before us--and what of afterwards? Was I sure of myself--later
on--when all was well?

I cut her short. Seizing both her hands:

"I accept the omen, Mrs. Williams!" I cried. "That's it! When all
is well! And all must be well in a very short time, with you and your
husband's help, which shall not fail me, I know. I feel as if the worst
of our troubles were over already...."

But at that moment I saw Seraphina coming out on deck. She emerged from
the companion, bare-headed, and looked about at her new surroundings
with that air of imperious and childlike beauty which made her charm.
The wind stirred slightly her delicate hair, and I looked at her; I
looked at her stilled, as one watches the dawn or listens to a sweet
strain of music caught from afar. Suddenly dropping Mrs. Williams' hand,
I ran to her....

When I turned round, Williams had joined his wife, and she had slipped
her arm under his. Her hand, thin and white, looked like the hand of an
invalid on the brawny forearm of that man bursting with health and good
condition. By the side of his lustiness, she was almost ethereal--and
yet I seemed to see in them something they had in common--something
subtle, like the expression of eyes. It _was_ the expression of their
eyes. They looked at us with commiseration; one of them sweetly, the
other with his owlish fixity. As we two, Seraphina and I, approached
them together, I heard Williams' thick, sleepy voice asking, "And so
he says he won't?" To which his wife, raising her tone with a shade of
indignation, answered, "Of course not." No, I was not mistaken. In their
dissimilar persons, eyes, faces, there was expressed a common trouble,
doubt, and commiseration. This expression seemed to go out to meet us
sadly, like a bearer of ill-news. And, as if at the sight of a
downcast messenger, I experienced the clear presentiment of some fatal
intelligence.

It was conveyed to me late in the afternoon of that 'same day out of
Williams' own thick lips, that seemed as heavy and inert as his voice.

"As far as we can see," he said, "you can't stay in the ship, Kemp. It
would do no one any good--not the slightest good. Ask Sebright here."

It was a sort of council of war, to which we had b