had just transpired.

"I know no more about it than you do," avowed the captain, "except
that it's a piece of business very likely to bring all our heads
to the block unless we show a clean pair of heels for it. So now
avast jawing, and obey orders!"

"Never! boys," I said, "till we are assured of that girl's safety.
What's done cannot be helped; but if she suffers further wrong
in our midst, we ought all to be hanged as cowardly accessories
to it."

"Dismiss your uneasiness in that regard," said a voice behind us,
at whose sound there was a general start. "To keep her safe and
inviolate is more my right and interest than yours, and it must
therefore be my especial duty to do so; but if I fail in it, I
care not though you make my life the forfeit, nor by what mode you
exact it."

So saying, he took his place at the helm, a press of sail was set,
and the ship fairly rent her way through the sea of Marmora before
the tempest. But the ship, like all around, seemed to acknowledge
his controlling power; and when I turned in with my watch, my sleep
was undisturbed by any fear of wind or water, though it was full
of troubled dreams. Now a lovely form in royal vesture beckoned
to me from a lattice; anon the gleam of a lantern flickered across
the terribly familiar face of a gnome, bearing out of a dark cavern
an armful of the most precious jewels, which had a wild appealing in
their light that puzzled me; while the roaring of the sea pervaded
it all with a kind of dream harmony.

After a time, the fury of the tempest abated; but the ship still
fled onward before strong gales, through those famous seas we had
cruised so often in youthful fancy with the Greek and the Trojan,
and the fear of pursuit ceased to haunt us.

Meanwhile we saw no more of our lovely passenger. Her strange guardian
kept a watch beside her cabin door as vigilant as that of a sentinel
at his post, or a saint before his shrine. His eye never swept the
horizon behind us with an anxious gaze, as ours did, while we looked
for the smoke of a pursuing steamer. Neither did it kindle at sight
of the famous landmarks that measured our rapid course, each of which
we hailed with delight as another harbinger of safety. He had ceased
to perform the duties of a seaman, and devoted himself entirely to
the care of the INVISIBLE PRINCESS, as we grew to call her. But
though invisible to our eyes, hers was the pervading presence of
our thoughts. Not a wave rocked the