ng for it just in time to prevent the rescued
woman from being spilled out.

Her eyes were too heavy to suggest more than a hint of the sleepy
surprise that perplexed her as she looked up at me, and she half
stumbled, half tottered, as I led her to her cabin. Mugridge grinned
insinuatingly in my face as I shoved him out and ordered him back to his
galley work; and he won his revenge by spreading glowing reports among
the hunters as to what an excellent "lydy's-myde" I was proving myself to
be.

She leaned heavily against me, and I do believe that she had fallen
asleep again between the arm-chair and the state-room. This I discovered
when she nearly fell into the bunk during a sudden lurch of the schooner.
She aroused, smiled drowsily, and was off to sleep again; and asleep I
left her, under a heavy pair of sailor's blankets, her head resting on a
pillow I had appropriated from Wolf Larsen's bunk.

CHAPTER XIX

I came on deck to find the _Ghost_ heading up close on the port tack and
cutting in to windward of a familiar spritsail close-hauled on the same
tack ahead of us. All hands were on deck, for they knew that something
was to happen when Leach and Johnson were dragged aboard.

It was four bells. Louis came aft to relieve the wheel. There was a
dampness in the air, and I noticed he had on his oilskins.

"What are we going to have?" I asked him.

"A healthy young slip of a gale from the breath iv it, sir," he answered,
"with a splatter iv rain just to wet our gills an' no more."

"Too bad we sighted them," I said, as the _Ghost's_ bow was flung off a
point by a large sea and the boat leaped for a moment past the jibs and
into our line of vision.

Louis gave a spoke and temporized. "They'd never iv made the land, sir,
I'm thinkin'."

"Think not?" I queried.

"No, sir. Did you feel that?" (A puff had caught the schooner, and he
was forced to put the wheel up rapidly to keep her out of the wind.)
"'Tis no egg-shell'll float on this sea an hour come, an' it's a stroke
iv luck for them we're here to pick 'em up."

Wolf Larsen strode aft from amidships, where he had been talking with the
rescued men. The cat-like springiness in his tread was a little more
pronounced than usual, and his eyes were bright and snappy.

"Three oilers and a fourth engineer," was his greeting. "But we'll make
sailors out of them, or boat-pullers at any rate. Now, what of the
lady?"

I know not why, but I was awa