ght into the darkness of the wind-swept deck.
It was a moment before she could distinguish objects at all. Then with
practiced step she went swiftly to the crouching figure at the distant
end of the long seat.

"I have learned something of her," murmured Turnbull. "That was her
father's brother, Escalante, who came aboard with her. That woman at
Sancho's was not her mother. _She_ has been dead for many a year. She
was own sister to De la Cruz. There is something back of their sending
this girl to San Francisco. Hush! Here she comes!"

With her arm thrown about the drooping girl, the stewardess came slowly
leading her to the doorway. The swinging portals had slammed shut in the
last plunge of the Idaho, and as the buoyant craft rose high on the next
billow, Turnbull and Loring both turned to open them. The light shone
full on their calm, soldierly faces as the stewardess thanked them, and
the shrinking child lifted up her frightened eyes for one brief moment,
glanced quickly from one to the other, then, with a low cry, slipped,
limp and senseless, through the woman's arms and fell in a dark heap
upon the deck.

CHAPTER XI.

Another day and the Idaho was battling for her life and that of every
soul aboard. Forging her way southward, she took the furious buffets of
the gale on the starboard quarter--"the right front," as Turnbull would
have put it had he not been too ill to care a fig where she was hit, and
only wished she might go down if that would keep her still. Sea after
sea burst over the dripping decks and tossed her like a cockle shell
upon the waters. Time and again the bows would plunge deep in some
rushing surge and then, uplifting, send torrents washing aft and pour
cataracts from her sides. Long before the dawn of day the red-eyed
commander had ordered the southward course abandoned and headed his
laboring craft for the opposite shores. Harbor there was none north of
the deep sheltered bay of La Paz, but there would be relief from the
tremendous poundings of the billows when once under the lee of Old
California. Obedient to her helm, the Idaho now met "dead ahead" both
wind and sea. The rolling measurably ceased. The pitching fore and aft
continued, but the passenger list by this time cared no longer to
discriminate. It was all one to all but one of their number. Loring, of
the engineers, thanks to long weeks of illness of another sort, was
mercifully exempted from the pangs of seasickness, but the