im?"

"Every minute."

"May we stop here?"

"Certainly. Will you walk into the cuddy or on to the poop?"

"Oh, we'll keep in the open, we'll keep in the open," cried the
gentleman, with the impetuosity of a man rendered irritable by the
heat. "You'll have had enough of the cuddy, Miss Le Grand, long before
you reach the old country."

She smiled. I liked her face then. It was a fine, glad, good-humoured
smile, and humanised her wonderful eyes just as though you clothed a
ghost in flesh, making the spectre natural and commonplace.

As we ascended the poop ladder, the gentleman asked me who I was,
quite courteously, though his whole manner was marked by a quality of
military abruptness. When he understood I was chief officer he
exclaimed:

"Then Miss Le Grand permit me to introduce Mr. Tyler to you. Miss
Georgina Le Grand is going home in your ship. She will be alone. We
have placed her in the care of the captain."

"Perhaps," said Miss Le Grand with another of her fine smiles, "I
ought to introduce you, Mr. Tyler, to my uncle, Colonel Atkinson."

Again I pulled off my cap, and the colonel laughed as he lifted his
wide straw hat. I guessed he laughed at a certain naivete in the
girl's way of introducing us.

The colonel was disposed to chat. Out of England Englishmen are
amongst the most talkative of the human race. Likely enough he wanted
to interest me in Miss Le Grand because of my situation on board. A
chief mate is a considerable figure. If any mishap incapacitates the
master, the chief mate takes charge. We walked the poop, the three of
us, in the violet shadow cast by the awning; the colonel constantly
directed his eyes along the quay to observe if the captain was coming.
During this stroll to and fro the white planks I got these
particulars, partly from the direct assertions of the colonel, partly
from the occasional remarks of the girl.

Colonel Atkinson had married her father's sister. Her father had been
an officer in the army, and had sailed from England with the then
Governor of New South Wales. After he had been in Sydney a few months
he sent for his daughter, whom he had left behind him with a maternal
aunt, her mother having died some years before. She reached Sydney to
find her father dead. His Excellency was very kind to her, and she
found very many sympathetic friends, but her home was in England, and
to it she was returning in the _White Star_, under the care of the
master, Captain Edwar