said this to you if I hadn't believed
this thing ought to be clinched the minute there was a chance to do it.
It's been hanging off and on long enough. Love you? Why, bless my
soul, sir, she's been thinking of nothing else for the past two or
three days but the coming of the postman, expecting a letter from you,
not considering that you didn't know where to address her, or that it
was rather scant time for a letter to come from La Guayra, where
Captain Stearns would take you if he succeeded in picking you up."

"The whole affair had a scanty air about it," said Captain Guy. "At
least, that's the way I look at it."

"You've never said anything like that before," said Mary, rather
sharply.

"Of course not," replied the captain. "I wanted to keep you as merry
and cheerful as I could. And besides, I didn't say I had thought there
was no chance of Mr. Rockwell's turning up. I only said I considered it
a little scantish."

"Love you?" continued Mary Phillips; "I should say so. I should have
brought her on deck to wave her handkerchief to you and kiss her
hand--perhaps, when you blew the state of your feelings through a
trumpet; but she wasn't strong enough. She was a pretty weak woman in
body and mind about that time. But from the moment I told her, and she
knew that you not only loved her, but were willing to say so, she began
to mend. And how she did talk about you, and how she did long that the
two ships might come together again! She kept asking me what I thought
about the condition of your vessel and whether it would be like to sink
if a storm came on. I could not help thinking that, as far as I knew
anything about ships, you'd be likely to float for weeks after we'd
gone down, but I didn't say that to her. And then she began to wonder
if you had understood that she had received your message and was glad
to get it. And I told her over and over and over again that you must
have heard me, for I screamed my very loudest. I am very glad that I
didn't know that you only caught those two words."

"Dear girl!" I ejaculated. "And did she send me a message on a
life-preserver?"

"You mean to say that you got it?" cried Mary Phillips.

"No," said I; "it floated away from me. What was it?"

"I got up that little scheme," said Mary Phillips, "to quiet her. I
told her that a letter might be floated to you that way, and that,
anyway, it would do no harm to try. I don't know what she wrote, but
she must have said a good d