eleven years he had never seen
threatenings of a worse night than that before us.

"Then why venture out?" asked I, timidly.

"They must have the bags over there; that's the reason," said he,
curtly: "besides, who's to say when he won't meet dirty weather at
sea,--one takes rough and smooth in this life, eh?"

The observation was not remarkable for originality, but I liked it. I
like the reflective turn, no matter how beaten the path it may select
for its exercise.

"It's a short trip,--some five or six hours at most," said he; "but
it's wonderful what ugly weather one sees in it. It's always so in these
narrow seas."

"Yes," said I, concurringly, "these petty channels, like the small
events of our life, are often the sources of our greatest perils."

He gave a little short grunt: it might have been assent, and it might
possibly have been a rough protest against further moralizing; at all
events, he resumed his paper, and read away without speaking. I had time
to examine him well, now, at my leisure, and there was nothing in his
face that could give me any clew to the generous nature of his offer
to me. No, he was a hard-featured, weather-beaten, rather stern sort of
man, verging on fifty seven or eight. He looked neither impulsive nor
confiding, and there was in the shape of his mouth, and the curve of the
lines around it, that peremptory and almost cruel decision that marks
the sea-captain. "Well," thought I, "I must seek the explanation of the
riddle elsewhere. The secret sympathy that moved him must have its root
in _me_; and, after all, history has never told that the dolphins
who were charmed by Orpheus were peculiar dolphins, with any special
fondness for music, or an ear for melody; they were ordinary creatures
of the deep,--fish, so to say, taken _ex-medio acervo_ of delphinity.
The marvel of their captivation lay in the spell of the enchanter. It
was the thrilling touch of _his_ fingers, the tasteful elegance of _his_
style, the voluptuous inthralment of the sounds _he_ awakened, that
worked the miracle. This man of the sea has, therefore, been struck
by something in my air, bearing, or address; one of those mysterious
sympathies which are the hidden motives that guide half our lives, had
drawn him to me, and he said to himself, 'I like that man. I have met
more pretentious people, I have seen persons who desire to dominate and
impose more than he, but there is that about him that somehow appeals
to th