were twenty or thirty women amongst the crowd, some of them with babies in their arms, and forty or fifty men, and at least a score of children. The vessel, being small and somewhat deep in the water, showed her decks to us with every floating slide to leeward. The picture, for strangeness, wildness, and I may add for beauty, was in its way incomparable. The flash of the low black hull through the milk-white boiling along her bends, the ivory gleam of her canvas melting into soft shadowing beyond the central curves of the cloths, the crowd upon her decks so variously and oddly apparelled that nothing short of the paint-brush would put the scene before you-red and green handkerchiefs round the head, caps like inverted flower-pots falling with a tassel to the shoulders, coats of frieze with great metal buttons, yellow half-boots, red petticoats, the gleam of gold or silver earrings such a huddle of bright colours defies the pen; one thought of an operatroupe, with its choruses and orchestra to boot, as having taken ship for a pleasure cruise, and fallen into some dreadful condition of incommunicable distress. The Norwegian flag, as I have said, flew Jack down half-masted from the main - topmast - head; but though she might have been a Norwegian ship, with a Norwegian crew in her, I cannot persuade myself that the women, the children, and most of the men were of that nation. Yet it was impossible to understand a word of what they said. Perhaps they would have been as unintelligible had they yelled in English, for every throat in the craft was strained at the same moment, and the wind brought the hubbub along to fall in a blind, dead way upon the ear like a fog upon

a sentence that was as Hebrew, afterwards pointing with his trumpet to his flag. I said to Mole, "Shall we hail them?"

He answered with a stamp of his foot, "No, by not if they was on fire! What do the dogs mean by sticking their craft alongside of us?"

Besides continuously shouting, the queer kaleidoscopic crowd convulsed themselves with every imaginable kind of gesture. Some pointed into their wide-open mouths; others clasped their hands upon their stomachs, with grimaces inimitably expressive of suffering; many motioned as if in the act of drinking; one man held a bottle aloft upside down, tapping it with his finger, and shaking his head most dolefully. There was indeed no need for them to tell in words what was the matter with them.

I cried, "Mr. Mole, you see how it is; those people want water-water!" I repeated, emphasizing the words, for if there's a human need that thrills to the heart of the sailor on the high seas, it is that. "It is in our power to relieve them to a small extent at least. Look at those children! No possible harm can come, man, from our allowing them to send a boat to us."

He turned upon me savagely. "Mr. Musgrave," he exclaimed, in a voice like a snarl, so hard did his passion make it for him to speak, "if ye have an atom of consarn in your safety-in the lady's safety-you'll hold your jaw."

I took Miss Grant's hand, and walked with her right aft, and seated myself by her side on the grating.

"You must let them have their way," she exclaimed; "they are devils, not men."

I was too sick at heart, too enraged by the man's insolence, too shocked by the picture of the gaping crowd to windward, to be able to answer her.

Presently there fell a silence upon the little brigantine, and you heard nothing but the seething of the water past her as her sharp stem sheared

through it with a hissing as of redhot iron. The hush was broken by the old white-bearded man bellowing again to us through his speakingtrumpet. Mole, with folded arms, stood looking on without a stir in the scowl of his face. Not a voice disturbed the stillness forward, where the men hanging over the rail were gazing with an air of mere idle curiosity. Twice the old man hailed us; he then got out of the rigging, and on reaching the deck flung his trumpet down with a furious gesture, sank upon his knees, and lifting up his hands to God, seemed to invoke a curse upon us, varying his dreadful tragic posture of denunciation by pointing at our brig with his eyes upturned. At the sight of this the rest of the people fell to menacing us with brandished fists, shouting and yelling at us till their voices blended into one long howl of execration. Yet had our crew been statues they could not have surveyed the dreadful scene more impassively. Presently the old man rose from his knees, and motioned to the fellow at the wheel to put it over; the topgallant and royal yards were hoisted afresh, the peak - halliards manned, and in a few moments the swift and beautiful little vessel was hauling away from us, buzzing round to the brilliant breeze with a wake following her white as the shining of the sun on the polished surface of a scythe.

I thought by her ranging to starboard that she meant to round into the wind, and so get her port tacks aboard for the ratch that she was upon when first sighted. Instead, when she had stood away far enough to come round to the wind under her starboard helm without chance of striking us, over went her wheel; she spun on her heel like some saucy, frisky woman in a waltz, and flattening in and bracing up fore and aft, sweep! she came for us again, passing close under our quarter, from no other motive that I could see than to furnish her people with another opportunity of uniting their voices in

a long, raging and shrieking curse upon us. Then like an arrow she was away astern crossing our wake; but whilst it was possible for the naked eye to hold her, one saw as it were the throbbing of the crowd along her as they shook their maledictions at us with flourished arms and fists.

When she had fairly settled away into toy-like dimensions, Mole, who had been watching her from his position near the main-rigging, came up to me, and said with the civil air of his former behaviour: "Sorry to have lost my temper, sir; but you know that all hands is resolved not to speak anything, from a scow to a line-of-battle ship. That's our resolution, and it 'ud make things easier if you was to be so good as to keep as clear an eye upon it as you're fixing upon the course to Cuba."

Miss Grant said quickly, as though, fearing an indiscretion of temper in me, she wished to interfere between myself and the man: "Hunger and thirst are dreadful things, Mr. Mole. Those people made their necessities very plain to us. It was the sight of the women and children that moved Mr. Musgrave."

"That's right enough, miss," he answered; "but who's to know what ailed them? Supposing it to have been thirst, what amount of fresh water calculated to be of any use to such a army of folks have we got to spare out of our stock? There's all the way to Cuba before us, with the sun pretty nigh overhead every day, and we've got a right to think of ourselves first, I allow. 'Sides," he continued, putting the sharp of his hand to his forehead to gaze at the now distant sail, and frowning to the brassy glare that came in folds from the running waters off each head of sea, "who's going to 'leviate people there's no onderstanding? Human they was, I dessay; but the likes of such a lump on a little vessel's deck, swearing, motioning, patting their guts, making pretend to drink, and then apparently falling down and cussing of us, ain't altogether the sort

of stroke you'd look for in natural things, 'specially when the whole biling is rigged up as if a body of organgrinders had turned pirates-stole some blooming Dutchman's vessel, and then missed their road."

He talked as if he wished me to find something humorous in his fancies. Bitterly indignant and resentful as I secretly felt, I was not such a fool as to despise an attitude of conciliation in the one man in whom I had now had time to observe the others had confidence, who indeed headed, and no doubt influenced, the crew; so I returned him a few civil, commonplace words, after which he went forward, where he stood talking awhile.

CHAPTER XXI.

A FESTIVE DOG-WATCH.

I re

AT sea so much which is strange happens, that no man who has knowledge of the life will trouble himself to hunt about for solutions. member a sailor once telling me that, his ship being blown to the westwards off the Chilian coast, deep in the heart of the Pacific waters they fell in with a Chinese junk, with three men and a couple of women on board. The wonder of this junk lay not in her sides gray with barnacles and green with weeds, nor in the queer, weather-befouled aspect of her faded Asiatic sails, nor in the ragged look of the bluegowned, be-tailed, mustard-coloured creatures that were on deck; but in her being where she was. How came she in the South Pacific? It was like the fly in the amber. The Chinamen made passionate efforts to represent their condition, but to no purpose.

Not a

motion of a hand of theirs was interpretable, and the captain of the ship growing wearied, filled on his vessel and proceeded on his course.

There are confrontments, I say, in the sea-life, which, being unintelligible on the face of them, no man who has his reason will attempt to explain. It was as likely as not that the brigantine

was a Norwegian that had fallen in with an emigrant vessel in distress, had taken off all or most of the people, and then run short of provisions and water. But there was so much to keep me thoughtful in other ways, that, though tragically strange as it was, it was not an incident to constrain my attention to it as though all had been well with us, and the thing no more than a brief break in the monotony of a sunny voyage. The reflection that grew out of it was-what sort of treatment were Miss Grant and I to expect from men in whom selfish fear could so work as to render them insensible to the most piteous of all the demands which the stern usage of the sea can force from human distress? It was the same selfish fear that

kept them quiet. One might guess there would be no mad broaching of rum-puncheons with them. They were too much alarmed with their situation to risk anything for the want of unclouded brains. Indeed, their sobriety was as good as a hint of their distrust of me. They very well knew that my one consuming desire must be to escape with Miss Grant from the brig; also that I was sailor enough to perceive there was no chance for me in that way outside the speaking of a ship that would be willing to take us off. They treated me with a sort of negative civility indeed; that is to say, they kept away from our end of the brig, and jumped to my orders; but then my knowledge of navigation rendered me so important to them that they could not do without me; though what haunted my mind as I stood with Miss Grant, watching the dim flicker of the brigantine's canvas on the edge of the wide blue sweep of sea, was, that a day must presently come when the high land of Cuba would be heaving into view, and what then would happen? There was something, too, inexpressibly malignant to my fancy in the request of the men that I should let them know when we were within a day's sail of the island; and the mere inability to gauge the meaning of this desire was

enough to keep every instinct in me writhing in a torment of uncertainty.

It was noon however, and I went below for Broadwater's quadrant. It was a primitive appliance, and likely as not to be inaccurate. However, I made eight bells with it, watched closely by the men as I screwed away at the sun, and then returned to the cabin to work out the sights. I used Broadwater's room, as the conveniences I required were in it, and whilst I sat at the little table Miss Grant arrived and stood behind me, looking over my shoulder as I jotted down the figures. She was anxious to know where we were. I unrolled the chart, and pointed to our position.

"It is still a long way to Cuba," she exclaimed, bending her stately figure over the chart. Her mouth

was as firm, her face as composed, her gaze as steadfast, soft, and serene as though she were viewing some picture in a book.

"Yes," I groaned, "a weary long way."

She seated herself on a little locker at the foot of old Broadwater's bunk. Her beauty was like a light upon the atmosphere of the quaint, somewhat darksome interior. You would have needed to peep in at the door to appreciate the curiosity of contrast wrought by her warm and glowing presence, the unconscious graceful dignity of her attitude, and by the odd, rough furniture of the cabin; the suit of clothes with the tarpaulin hat on top, swinging like the figure of Broadwater himself at the bulkhead; the soles of the jack-boots sprawling in the shadow under the bunk, with her little feet a yard away from them; the rough, time-bronzed pilot-coat, hanging behind her as a canvas, so to speak, for the perfections of her clear skin and the flash of her dark eyes to show

on.

She leaned towards me, folding her hands over her knee, and said, “Will it be possible to escape from this brig?"

I started and exclaimed: "I have been full of that fancy since the brigan

tine hauled off. No; I do not think it is possible. We must take such luck as we may find here."

"I want you to understand, Mr. Musgrave," said she, "that if any scheme of escape should occur to you, you will find me equal to it. I shall not mind what I do, indeed. I will dress up as a man-I will row an oar -yes! I can row. I am not afraid of firing pistols. firing pistols. Alexander will tell you I am a good shot."

She looked down into her lap with a faint smile, then her eyes met mine again-a full gaze, brilliant with inquiry.

"Well," said I, "I had not been in your company ten minutes before I guessed that you would be the proper sort of girl for a pinch. I was right; and so you see, spite of my being so young, I am capable of taking a correct view sometimes of human nature."

She laughed softly, and with a foreign gesture of her hand said: "You are too impetuous, too emotional. One would hardly think you an Englishman, you abandon yourself so readily to impressions."

"It may be as you say," said I, feeling somehow almost as much confused by her manner and by her beauty as on the day when she had first stood before me in the parlour of the London lodging-house; "but this anxiety is new in you. What makes you talk of escaping from the brig?"

"Simply-as I have said, Mr. Musgrave that if you have any scheme I am willing to bear as good a part in it as if I were a man." She drew herself erect, as though she would suggest physical as well as intellectual strength.

"I have no scheme," said I; "would to God I could see my way to one!" "Might we not lower the boat that hangs at the vessel's side?"

I shook my head quickly. "No," said I, "there is always the fellow at the wheel. How should we be able to lower a boat, even on the blackest night, unperceived by him?"

"But could you not gag him?" said she. "I could help you to pinion him, and then stand over him pistol in hand," smiling, yet with a world of resolution in her gaze, "whilst you let the boat sink to the water."

I went to the door and peeped out to make sure that nobody was listening.

"Supposing," said I, approaching her close that she might hear my voice, which was scarce more than a whisper,

66

we should succeed in getting away in the boat, what would be our fate in a little open ark in the middle of the great Atlantic, exposed all day to the broiling sun, and all night to the heavy dews, to say nothing of squalls, thunderstorms, gales, putrefying calms, and the rest of the conditions of the glorious ocean-life! No, no! dismiss that from your mind-for your own sake, Miss Grant-my cousin would shoot me for subjecting you to such risks and privations. But," I continued, anxiously, for I thought I might find a hint in her woman's cleverness, "this thought is new in you. Why do you wish to escape from the brig? A bitter strong wish it must be when, to gratify it, you are willing to face the hazard of an open boat."

"Oh, Mr. Musgrave, I am shocked by the inhumanity of the crew. I had believed them plain sailors forced into evil by bad treatment, but whose better natures would appear again when the tyranny they suffered from had ceased. I think so no longer. fear their intentions towards us may be may be I am frightened by the vagueness of their directions to you. They speak of Cuba, but they name. no part of it.”

I

"Hush!" I cried, hearing a footstep. Mole put his head in at the door, knocking with his great knuckles on the bulkhead as he did so.

"Beg pardon," said he; "I thought I'd just come along and see how the land lies with us to-day."

There was insolence in this intrusion, but then I had to consider it was

my own bringing about. He stood in the doorway, peering in, in a posture civil enough, cap in hand, filling the frame of the door with his great figure.

"Here," said I, putting my finger upon the chart, "is the brig's position to-day at noon."

He came to the table and peered close.

"The vessel's heading west by south," said he, after a pause; "this here map don't show the West Indies."

"No," said I, "it is the North Atlantic only but there should be a track-chart in that bag to give you all the bearings you want."

There were nearly a dozen charts rolled up in the bag. I pulled out four, and on opening the fifth found it to be what I needed- -a trackchart of the world. This I spread before Mole, and left him to find out for himself whither a west by south course would carry us from the point of latitude and longitude I pencilled upon the chart.

"Well I hope the course I am shaping satisfies you?" said I presently.

"It'll work out as true as a hair, it seems to me," he answered.

"To what part of Cuba are we sailing, Mr. Mole?" inquired Miss Grant, in her most natural manner, without any attempt at an artless voice or a face of innocent wonderment.

"We ain't decided yet," he answered promptly, picking up his cap and going to the door. "We mean to keep Charles clear of the gallows if we can. Cuba's a good bit off yet, and when Mr. Musgrave lets us know that it's within a day's sail, we may have to tarn to and discuss what's to be done, onless we've come to an agreement beforehand."

He gave a nod towards the statecabin, and turning upon us again, said, "The cook's asked me to say your dinner's ready, sir." He then went on deck.

We found a very

tolerable meal