A week had passed, and Calamity, now convalescent, was able once more to resume command. As, however, Smith was still unable to discharge his customary duties, the Captain appointed Miss Fletcher temporary mate.

"Since you are now an officer," he said with that grim smile of his, "you had better take your meals in the cabin with me."

The girl's eyes lit up with pleasure for a moment, then the light died out of them and her lips hardened.

"Thank you all the same, but I should prefer to have my meals in my own cabin as before," she answered.

"Please yourself," answered Calamity carelessly.

After this, although their relationship remained superficially much the same as it had always been, the Captain taciturn and abrupt, the girl quiet and self-possessed, there was a subtle change in the attitude of each towards the other. Calamity had come to rely on the girl, and now accepted at her hands many little services which tended towards his greater comfort, services which he would have rejected with curt imperiousness less than a fortnight ago.

One day he sent for McPhulach, and in due course the engineer appeared, clad as usual, in soiled dungarees, and clasping a piece of oily cotton-waste in his hand.

"Ye're wishfu' tae see me, sir?" he inquired.

"Yes; sit down."

The engineer perched himself on the cabin skylight, and began mechanically to rub the brass rails with his cotton-waste.

"Would you care to go to England after this trip, McPhulach?" asked the Captain abruptly.

McPhulach ceased rubbing the brass rails, and stared at Calamity in astonishment.

"Tae England?" he repeated.

"Yes. I may want you in connection with that document you signed, and quite possibly I shall be able to give you a good shore job."

"It a' depends," answered the engineer thoughtfully. "Ye see, skeeper, I hae sairtain financial obleegations in that country which I canna dischairge. An' meybe there are ane or twa leddies who'd mak' it no verra pleasant for me gin they were tae ken I was back."

"H'm; I should have thought that a man of your resource and experience could have overcome that difficulty."

McPhulach considered for a little time, and the cloud on his brow lifted.

"I ken brawly wha' tae dae, sir!" he exclaimed. "Gin ye'll ca' me Jones and give oot that I'm a Welshman, there's no a body who'd recognise me."

Something like a chuckle escaped the Captain, but he answered in a perfectly grave voice.

"If you think that device will overcome your difficulties, I have no objection to calling you Jones and informing all whom it may concern that you're a Welshman."

"Frae Pontypreed."

"From Pontypridd, if you like. That sounds Welsh enough."

"Then I'll sign on wi' ye, sir."

"Right, then that's settled," answered Calamity, and McPhulach, preening himself upon his astuteness, returned to the engine-room.

That evening, when Miss Fletcher came on the bridge to relieve the Captain, he seemed inclined to linger.

"By the twenty-seventh," he said, "we ought to be in Singapore."

"In Singapore," murmured the girl, and nodded as if in answer to some unspoken thought.

"Yes. Have you finally decided what to do?"

"I shall see the British Consul, lay before him my father's papers, and ask him to advance me sufficient money to——"

"There's no need to ask him that," interrupted Calamity. "I could let you have whatever you wanted, even if there wasn't——"

"Still, if you don't mind, I should prefer to borrow it from the Consul," she broke in without looking at him.

"As you please. Then I take it that you have made up your mind to go to California?"

"Yes; I will take your advice and try fruit-farming."

"H'm," grunted Calamity.

"You told me it was the best—in fact, the only thing I could do," she said with a faint touch of sarcasm in her voice.

"Yes—yes, I suppose I did."

"The profession I know best and which I love best—that of the sea—I cannot follow, being a woman. You pointed that out yourself."

"It is self-evident!"

Calamity turned away as if to leave the bridge, hesitated on the top step of the companion-ladder, and then came back again. Seemingly he did so only to glance at the compass, but, having done this, he came up to the bridge-rail and leant over it.

"You are a strange young woman," he said abruptly.

"Am I?"

He lapsed into silence again and Dora Fletcher, looking at him surreptitiously out of the corner of her eye, marvelled exceedingly. Once more this extraordinary man was revealing himself to her in a new light. Usually so self-confident and determined in manner and speech, he exhibited a curious hesitancy this evening that puzzled the girl. He was like a man who wished to say something yet, for some reason or other, feared to say it. This so impressed her that she grew uneasy, and, moving a little farther away from him, leant against the starboard rail and gazed fixedly across the darkening waters.

Presently the Captain straightened his back, walked to the port rail, and, after standing there a moment or two, crossed to where the girl was standing. He did not speak, and, although her back was towards him, she knew that he was very close. Involuntarily she clutched the rail tightly as if to support herself, her heart began to beat faster and her breath came in little catches. And yet, she told herself, there was no reason for this; it made her angry, angry with herself for being unreasonably agitated, and angry with him for being the cause of it. He remained standing close behind her, saying nothing, till at last she could bear it no longer.

"Won't you miss your watch below, sir?" she asked.

"That is my affair," he answered in his old curt way, and she felt a sense of relief at the familiar tone.

He remained where he was, however, regarding her intently and with an expression that would have startled the girl had she seen it. There was every excuse for that look on the Captain's face, for she made as comely a picture as any man might wish to gaze upon, with her slim, supple figure and the great braid of red-brown hair coiled round her shapely head. Masculine as she was in her fearlessness, her strength, and her power of command, she was withal intensely feminine, possessing besides all the lure of blossoming womanhood.

All this Calamity recognised clearly enough now, if he had never done so before. He was very far from being a sentimentalist, but, as he stood so near to her, the memory of that day when she had frankly avowed her love for him came back with poignant vividness. He knew now that he had been a blind fool and a brutal fool as well. The greatest treasure that life can give had been his for the taking, and he had spurned it. But now he had awakened to a sense of what he had lost.

Such were the thoughts which passed through Calamity's mind as he lingered irresolutely on the bridge. It was an altogether new sensation to him, this self-condemnation and timid hesitancy. For the first time in his life, perhaps, Calamity was afraid. It was, if nothing else, a chastening experience.

As for Dora Fletcher, her whole being was in a tumult of warring emotions. Instinctively she felt something of what was passing through the Captain's mind. She could not but guess that this sudden and remarkable change in his manner was due to herself, that it meant the beginning of a new relationship between them—at least, so far as he was concerned. Already their relations had passed through several different phases: first she had been a mere nonentity in his eyes; then an individual to be tolerated, a nurse later on, then a trusted and efficient officer, and finally—finally, she supposed, a memory ever growing more indistinct as the years passed.

Just as his near presence was becoming intolerable to the girl because of the complex emotions it occasioned, he moved away and strolled towards the other end of the bridge. She wished fervently that he would go below, for while he remained near her she was in a fever of apprehension.

Presently, however, he turned again and walked slowly back to where she was standing on the lee side of the bridge.

"Miss Fletcher," he said abruptly.

"Yes, sir," she answered, turning and facing him.

"Will you marry me?"

It had come at last, the inevitable climax she had felt approaching ever since his recovery from that illness. For a moment she was conscious of a thrill of exquisite joy, and her carefully nursed resolution wavered. Then, remembering the communication Smith had made to her, she pulled herself together.

"No," she answered in a low voice.

The Captain turned on his heel and walked in a leisurely manner to the other end of the bridge, where he lingered for a moment. Then he came back, glanced at the compass, and turned towards the girl.

"Keep her west by north," he said, and slowly descended the companion-ladder.