y what's the matter with you," said he, "I can give you
a piece of advice which will do you good if you take it. I think you
told me that you are not engaged to this lady," (I nodded) "and that
you never proposed to her except through a speaking-trumpet." I
allowed silence to make assent. "Well, now, my advice is to give her
up, to drop all thoughts of her, and to make up your mind to tackle
onto some other girl when you find one that is good enough. You haven't
the least chance in the world with this one. Captain Guy is mad in love
with her. He told me so himself, and when he's out and out in love with
a girl he's bound to get her. When I was with him he might have been
married once a month if he'd chosen to; but he didn't choose. Now he
does choose, and I can tell you that he's not going to make love
through a speaking-trumpet. He'll go straight at it, and he'll win,
too. There's every reason why he should win. In the first place, he's
one of the handsomest fellows, and I don't doubt one of the best
love-makers that you would be likely to meet on land or sea. And then
again, she has every reason to be grateful to him and to look on him as
a hero."

I listened without a word. The captain's reasoning seemed to me very
fallacious.

"You don't know it," said he, "but Captain Guy did a good deal more
than pick up those two women from an abandoned vessel. You see he was
making his way north with a pretty fair wind from the south-west, the
first they'd had for several days, and when his lookout sighted _La
Fidelite_ nobody on board thought for a minute that he would try to
beat up to her, for she lay a long way to the west of his course,
though pretty well in sight.

"But Captain Guy has sharp eyes and a good glass, and he vowed that he
could see something on the wreck that looked like a handkerchief waved
by a woman. He told me this himself as we were walking from my ship to
his. Everybody laughed at him and wanted to know if women waved
handkerchiefs different from other people.

"They said that any bit of canvas might wave like that, and that it was
plain enough that the vessel was abandoned. If it was not, it could be,
for there was a boat still hanging to one of its davits. Captain Guy
paid no attention to this, but spied a little longer; then he vowed
that he was going to make for that vessel. There was one of the owners
on board, and he up and forbid Captain Guy to do it. He told him that
they had been delayed e