female would have caused it to overflow.

Contrary to all expectation, my mother turned out a capital sailor;
better even than Bella, on whom she attended during the first part of
the voyage when the latter was ill.

"D'you think we shall have a good passage across the far-famed Bay of
Biscay?" asked Nicholas, as he sat on the cabin skylight, smoking a mild
cigar. Talking of that, smoking was the only thing in which I could not
join my future brother-in-law. I know not how it is, but so it is that
I cannot smoke. I have often tried to, but it invariably makes me sick,
for which, perhaps, I ought to be thankful.

"It is to be hoped we shall," I replied to his question; "but I am not a
judge of weather. What think you, Mr Whitlaw?" I said, addressing my
skipper.

"I hope we shall, sir," replied the skipper, with a deferential touch of
his cap, and a glance round the horizon; "but I don't feel sure."

Mr Whitlaw was an American, and a splendid specimen of the nation to
which he belonged,--tall, lanky, broad-shouldered, gentlemanly, grave,
self-possessed, prompt, good-humoured: I have seldom met a more
agreeable man. He had been in the Northern navy of America during the
last war, and had already introduced some of the discipline, to which he
had been accustomed, amongst my small crew.

Bella was up on deck enjoying the sunset; so was my mother. Lancey was
busy cleaning my fowling-piece, near the companion-hatch.

"It is charming," exclaimed my mother.

"So calm," said Bella.

"And settled-looking," remarked Nicholas, flipping the end of his cigar
over the side.

"Mr Whitlaw does not appear to think so favourably of the weather," I
remarked.

The skipper, looking gravely at a particular point on the horizon, said,
in a quiet tone--

"The clouds are heavy."

"From which you judge that the fine weather may not last?"

"It may be so, but the indications are not certain," was his cautious
reply.

That night we were in a perfect chaos of wind and water. The
storm-fiend seemed to have reserved all his favours in order to give us
a befitting reception. The sea roared, the wind yelled, the yacht--but
why repeat the oft-told tale that invariably ends with "Biscay, O!" A
week later and we were in a dead calm, revelling in warmth, bathed in
sunshine, within the straits of Gibraltar.

It was evening. All sail was set. Not a puff of wind rendered that
display available. The reef-points pattered as the