climb
up from the raging surf on to a rock. It was no other than our man
Anders. He fixed his dull, glassy eyes upon me as he struggled,
apparently hindered from saving himself by something down at his feet,
which I could not see. He looked as if he wanted to tell me something.
The vision only lasted a moment; but a torturing almost unbearable
feeling, that in the same moment some misfortune was befalling us at
home, drove me from the room to wander restlessly in the fields for the
rest of the day.

When I came back they asked me what had been the matter, that I had so
suddenly turned deadly pale and hurried from the room.

A fortnight later there came a sad letter from home. My father's yacht,
the _Hope_, which, after the custom of those days, was not insured, and
was loaded for the most part with fish, which my father had bought at
his own cost, had been wrecked on the way from Bergen in a storm on
Stadt Sea. The ship had sprung a leak, and late in the afternoon had to
be run ashore. The crew had escaped with their lives, but our man Anders
had had both legs broken.

This shipwreck gave the first decided blow to my father's fortune. The
second was to come towards the end of the following year, in the loss of
another yacht, the _Unity_; and the third blow, with more important
results, was struck when it was at last decided by Government that our
trading station was not to be a stopping-place for steamers.

CHAPTER VIII

_AT HOME_

In December I was once more at home, where I found everything outwardly
the same as of old, only, possibly by reason of what had passed, still
quieter and sadder. My father was restlessly active, but not very
communicative. He probably did not consider me fitted to share his
anxieties.

Susanna, who, like myself, was now over nineteen years of age, was on a
visit at a house some miles away and was to come home at Christmas. My
longing for her was indescribable.

It was during the last dark, stormy week before Christmas, that the
Spanish brig _Sancta Maria_ was driven by the weather in to our station,
in a rather damaged condition, which, with the poor labour we could
command, resulted in her having to lie under repair for nearly six
weeks.

The captain, who owned both ship and cargo, was a tall, sallow,
becomingly-dressed Spaniard, with iron-grey hair, black eyes, and large
features. With him was his son, Antonio Martinez, a handsome young man
with an olive-brown face and