Next day they broached a cask of beef for the forecastle. The meat proved fairly sweet, and that and a kidful of currant-dumplings kept the men quiet. But on the following day the bad pork was served out again. Captain Glew refused to hear the boatswain on the subject, and those of the men who could not swallow the meat made shift for a meal with pea-soup and ship's biscuit.

Not a word of this trouble, which Captain Glew must have known was charged with one of the deadliest of all ocean menaces, reached Mr. Vanderholt.

'I'll not have him worried,' said Glew to the mate. 'If you sent them a Mansion House tuck-out, the fiends would growl, tell you it wasn't Galapagos turtle, and that they'd hooked better salmon out of cans. I'm responsible for the stores. I knew what I was about when I ordered them. Surely you know Humph Lyons, the ships' chandler in Dock Street, Limehouse? He's shipped for me before, and he's likewise shipped for my owners, and I've never heard a murmur against him.'

'Was that the Lyons an action was brought against for selling condemned Admiralty stores as good food for merchant sailors?' said Mr. Tweed, with a grin.

'It was his brother,' said Captain Glew. 'A man can't be responsible for his relations.'

'As to relations,' said Mr. Tweed, 'a man may try his darned hardest to be all that's right, and in conformity with the law and piety, and still find himself adrift at the end. I remember a skipper saying to me: "It's all very well to say, 'Honour thy father and thy mother,' but I knew a man who all his life did his fired best to honour his father, and when his mother lay dying she told him, with the tears running over her cheeks, that the man he'd been a-honouring all his life had never been his father at all!"'

Here the groggy little man set up so loud a laugh that Captain Glew walked away, and the conversation came to an end.

The days passed. The Mowbray broke the seas of the Bay clothed to her royal yard. Blue sky was over her, and sunshine bright as that of the English June lighted up the rolling ocean. By this time Mr. Vanderholt was perfectly recovered, and had ceased to apologize to Captain Glew for being sea-sick. He smoked his long pipe. He stalked the deck arm-in-arm with his daughter. He repeatedly asked her and Captain Glew how they thought he was looking; and Captain Glew swore that in all his life he had never seen any gentleman pick up so surprisingly fast.

'I'm quite sure,' the captain said, 'Miss Vanderholt will agree with me, sir, when I say that you're looking ten years younger this same day than at the hour of your starting.'

Miss Violet smiled, and Vanderholt stroked his beard, and grinned till his eyes faded into little wrinkles.

One fine hot morning, when the Mowbray was far to the southward of the Madeira parallels, Mr. Vanderholt and his daughter came on deck from the breakfast-table, and seated themselves under the shelter of a short awning. The young lady held a novel. Mr. Vanderholt smoked his immense and richly-coloured pipe. Captain Glew passed them in short to-and-fro look-out excursions; and forward the little ship carried a busy face, with seamen at work on the hundred jobs which, fair or foul, a vessel exacts from her crew at sea. A soft wind blew. The sky was capacious with the clarity of the horizon, and wondrous lofty with light cloud, resembling froth that dries in curls upon a beach.

A ship was in sight on the starboard quarter, going away north-west, under square yards. Her spires trembled in the moist, rich distance, as though they were rays of starlight, twisting, burning, dying. She had been too far off to signal, nor did Mr. Vanderholt seem particularly anxious that the safety and whereabouts of his little ship should be reported at home.

'Who is troubling his head about us, do you think?' he had said to his daughter on one occasion when this question of reporting had arisen between him and Glew. 'I am not insured. No man in the city is concerned for me. And of our friends, how many are thinking of us?'

And he held up two fingers with a satirical smile, as though he should say, 'D'ye think two are thinking of us?'

'If George returns before we do,' Miss Vi had said in reply, 'I should like him to know that all was well with us down to the date on which we were last heard of.'

'We'll signal steam,' had been old Vanderholt's answer. 'Anything blown along by canvas will not arrive at home very much earlier than we shall.'

Now, on this morning—this fine hot morning—they sat together in very comfortable deck-chairs, one trying to read a novel, the other finding his tobacco delicious in the open air. Presently, directing her eyes at some men who sat at work stitching upon a sail near the galley, Miss Vanderholt said:

'How could any man be a sailor! How could you have survived such a horrible life! See how hard those men are kept at work all day; and at night they have to watch, wet or dry, for four hours at a time.'

'Ay; and the colder it is, and the damper it is, and the more abominable in a general way the whole precious weather is, the harder they have to watch,' answered Vanderholt.

'Have sailors no amusements?' inquired his daughter.

'How do sailors amuse themselves, Glew?' called Mr. Vanderholt.

And the man, arresting his look-out walk, stood up before father and daughter.

'By growling, sir,' answered Glew.

Miss Vanderholt did not like the expression that entered Captain Glew's eyes when he made that answer.

'A happy, well-disciplined crew are the jolliest company of men in the world,' said Mr. Vanderholt. 'They have plenty to eat, no rent to pay, dollars for the girls at the end of the voyage, and they behold the wonders of the world at the cost of the ship-owner—poor fellow! For diversions, think—they dance in the dog-watch, they sing songs and tell stories, they play at cards, they fight——'

'A little, sir,' said Captain Glew.

'We made a sport of fighting in our time,' said Vanderholt. 'We'd take two men, and nail them face to face on a sea-chest, with long spikes driven through the stern of their trousers. It was good sport.'

He opened his mouth to let out a cloud, smiling at some forecastle recollections, which perhaps caused him to regret that his daughter was present, for he found Glew a good listener.

'Sailors take some pleasure in cards,' said Captain Glew. 'I remember, when I was second-mate of a ship, having occasion to go forward. It was night, a dead calm; a frightful thunderstorm was about us; the lightning was hissing like snakes all over everything that was metal aloft, and every crash of thunder was like the splitting of the heavens by God's own hand in wrath. I took a peep down the forecastle, and in the midst of this tremendous commotion, which was fit to subdue the heart of the stoutest, sat four sailors at a chest, playing at cards, a lighted candle in a bottle in the midst of them, all so intent on the game that they heard and saw nothing.'

'Sail-ho!' at this moment sang out a fellow aloft, on the little top-gallant yard.

'Where away?' shouted Glew, with the sharp of his hand to his mouth.

'Right ahead, sir!' cried down the seaman, in a sort of chant.

'If she's going to England you shall make our number, Glew—for George's sake,' said Mr. Vanderholt, looking at his daughter.

Just then the boatswain hailed the sailor on the top-gallant yard, and gave him some directions.

'That Jones is a fine-looking man,' said Mr. Vanderholt; 'such as he should never want a ship. What's his nation?'

'London, sir.'

'A mighty nation!' exclaimed Miss Violet.

'Which does not believe in a God,' said Vanderholt, 'though it worships a Madonna called Our Lady of Threadneedle Street.'

'There's many a pilgrim always bound to that shrine,' said Captain Glew, trying to smile.

'I am of Dutch extraction,' continued Mr. Vanderholt; 'but never dropped the letter H, nor found the V's and W's difficult. I have out-generationed that trouble of the foreigner. But why is it that the Cockney should drop his H? You speak of London. Think of the number of H's which are dropped in it every day!'

'George once made a pun,' exclaimed Miss Vanderholt. 'We were talking of a certain young lady, and I said: "Do you observe that she drops her H's?" "Her sister does worse," he answered. "Address her and she drops her eyes."'

Captain Glew again tried to smile. Mr. Vanderholt, expelling a great cloud of smoke, burst in:

'Yes; and I'll tell you what those girls' father once said to me at an evening party. He took me aside, and said: "Did you ever 'ear of that fine riddle in rhyme supposed to have been written by Lord Byron, though it's attributed to a lady? I'll tell it you," and my friend, with a grave face, began:

and so he went on to the end. "Well," says he, "what is it?" "I give it up," says I. "The letter H," says he.'

'Did you ever see a funeral at sea, father?' inquired Miss Vanderholt, watching the ship ahead, that was growing larger and whiter.

'Scores, my blessing; much too many. We shipped a heavy cargo at Bombay, and amongst it was cholera. I can still hear, in that dead calm of twelve days, the recurrent, sullen plunge of the shotted corpse.'

'The worst of being buried is, that you don't know what they're saying about you,' said Captain Glew. 'That's true, whether ashore or whether at sea. As the corpse goes along in the car, it might like to know what sort of a following it had, how the people who'd been thought friends had turned out. Yet, I dare say,' he went on, 'that if a man could get up and listen a bit, and take a look round, he'd be glad to sneak back.'

'Yes; if he had to hear his will read in a room full of relations,' said Miss Violet.

'I have often thought this,' said Mr. Vanderholt: 'that a man who is a genius and famous should provide by his will for a quiet funeral; for, by doing so, he guards against the risk of neglect.'

This was a touch above Glew. Mr. Vanderholt rose, and went to the rail to knock out the ashes of his pipe into the sea. Miss Violet began to read, and the captain fell to walking the deck.

The ship ahead grew rapidly. It was first like the half of the crescent moon leaning and shining, then it swelled into cotton-white canvas and a green hull. But the sun ate up the wind at noon. The vessels were then two miles apart, and it was not until about three in the afternoon that they were wafted by cat's-paws within speaking distance. She was a little barque, dingy with long travel. Her copper was green. Her figure-head was a romantic imagination. It represented a nymph, with her black hair fairly concealing her shape, extending her arms in a posture of ecstasy at a large gilt star that was fixed within a foot or two of her hands. Her canvas shone like satin, and at her mizzen-peak end languidly swung the Stripes and Stars, a very large flag, looking brand-new. A number of men, some of them coloured, lay over the forecastle-rail, indolently watching the Mowbray. The barque had a little poop, and upon it, with one foot resting on a hen-coop and one hand grasping a backstay, stood the most extraordinary figure Mr. Vanderholt had ever beheld.

It resembled a man dressed in what, in former ages, were known as petticoat-breeches. Their plenty made them look like a frock. Inspecting this figure through a binocular glass, Mr. Vanderholt perceived that the rest of its garb consisted of a white shirt, a silk handkerchief, tied in a sailor's knot under a wide turned-down collar, a braided jacket, blue, and a cap with a naval peak, much after the pattern that is worn by yachting men.

A short, square man stood at the wheel, that blazed in a brass circle to the sun, and beside him stood another man, remarkable for nothing but a long goatlike beard, and a blue cap, tasselled, pointed, and overhanging, such as mutinous smacksmen wear in Italian opera.

'A queer ship's company!' exclaimed Mr. Vanderholt to Glew. 'In all your going a-fishing did you ever see the like of such a sailor-man as that chap yonder in the trousers?'

Captain Glew's reply was arrested by a hail from the little barque.

'Ho!' shrilled the strange figure in breeches. 'The schooner ahoy! What schooner are you?'

'The Mowbray, of London, on a cruise. What ship are you?'

'The Wife's Hope, from Calcutta to New York! Eighty days out! Jute and linseed! We're short of sugar: can you loan me some?'

All this was delivered in the voice of a bantam-cock, delirious with continuous triumphant clarioning.

'The Wife's Hope,' said Mr. Vanderholt, turning to his daughter. 'Here's some Yankee notion.'

'If that figure's not a woman,' answered Violet, 'it does not speak with the voice of a man.'

After a brief consultation with Mr. Vanderholt, Captain Glew shouted:

'I think we can let you have some sugar—a cask of moist, and some lump, to help you along to the next ship. We'll carry it aboard for you.'

The figure in breeches flourished its hand in a gesture of delight, and then began to walk the short poop with superior stately strides, constantly directing glances at the yacht. The Mowbray carried three good boats, and the boat amidships was the long-boat; this was promptly got over the side. They broke out a cask of moist sugar and a case of lump; and a crew having entered her, Mr. and Miss Vanderholt were steered by Mr. Tweed to the Wife's Hope over the glazed heave of the deep-blue afternoon swell.

Very hot it was. The sunshine tingled in the water, and the trembling fire rose roasting to the face.

'Do you think we shall be welcome, father?' said Miss Vanderholt, a little nervously.

'We are here to see the wonders of the deep,' answered Mr. Vanderholt, 'whether they welcome us or not; and yonder figure seems to me to be one of the greatest wonders in the world.'

'It is a woman, sir,' said Mr. Tweed.

'A female ship-master,' exclaimed Mr. Vanderholt. 'The Wife's Hope! It should be the Husband's Despair.'

Miss Violet was gazing at the receding shape of the Mowbray. The schooner lightly leaned with the swell, darting glances of flame as she swayed. Tender, blue fingers of shadow, like an outstretched hand in front of the sun, overran her sails, and the swing of her canvas was a miracle of milk-white light and violet shade against the hot liquid blue of the afternoon sky.

'A vessel like that is like a horse,' said Violet: 'you want to pat her side, to whisper encouraging words to her, to thank her for the noble, sweeping pace she has carried you at. How little she looks, and how lonely!'

They were fast approaching the barque. The petticoat-trousered figure, seeing that company was coming, had ordered a ladder to be thrown over the side, and she—for a woman it was—stood in the open gangway to receive the visitors.

'Have you brought what we asked you for?' she cried, the strain in her voice lifting it to a shriek.

Tweed answered with one of those tumbling gesticulations—a peculiar drunken, rounding fall of the arm and dropping of the head—which with sailors stand for 'yes.'

'Jump aloft, a hand,' screamed the lady skipper, 'and make fast a whip to the yard-arm! I'll want that sugar carefully hoisted!'

The boat drove alongside, and Mr. and Miss Vanderholt ascended the short ladder. Now that they stood close, they found that by no possibility could her garb make a man of the captain, with her large fine eyes and delicate features, though sunburnt to deformity. She was a tall woman, with a lofty, commanding air, which was not to be neutralized by anything diverting in the suggestions of her apparel. She looked hard at Miss Violet, and ran her eyes over her dress; her sex spoke in that, spite of her cropped head and abundant breeks.

'I have brought a cask of moist sugar, and a case of broken lump,' said Mr. Vanderholt, lifting his hat; 'and, madam, if you are in command of this vessel, it gives me a very singular satisfaction to make your acquaintance.'

'Don't call me "madam," I beg, sir!' exclaimed the other, showing a white set of teeth in a cordial smile, full of spirit. 'I am Captain Lind.'

'Captain Lind, then,' said Mr. Vanderholt, again lifting his hat, whilst his eyes disappeared in a grin full of wrinkles.

'You are the owner of that yacht, I reckon?' said Captain Lind; and Miss Vanderholt noticed the American accent in the skipper's speech.

'Ay, captain, that's my yacht, and this is my daughter,' answered Vanderholt, continuing to grin with all his might, whilst he looked first at Captain Lind, and then aloft, and then along the decks.

'What do I owe you for that sugar?' said Captain Lind.

'Our visit fully discharges your obligations, captain. There is enough, maybe, to keep you sweet till you get more.'

'Well, I thank you,' said the lady skipper; 'and when I have seen that cask safely inboards, we'll go into the cabin and drink a cup of tea.'

Mr. Vanderholt pulled out his watch, then, hailing Glew, said that he and Miss Vanderholt would remain another half-hour on board the barque.

'Don't let the vessels slide far apart, Glew!' he roared. 'Tweed, whilst we're below keep a bright look-out on the weather.'

The mate of the Mowbray touched his cap.

Miss Vanderholt stared with amazement at Captain Lind. A woman in charge of a ship! A woman qualified to handle the complicated machinery of the gear and sails of a barque of no mean tonnage, as tonnage then went! Did the men obey her? Wasn't she afraid of her sailors? And Miss Violet turned to inspect the seamen who were getting the sugar aboard in the gangway, whilst others lay on the rail lazily staring at the Mowbray from the forecastle-head. A rough lot they looked—rougher even than the Mowbray's crew, by virtue, no doubt, of their apparel, which was showing very much like the end of a long voyage. They carried sheath-knives on their hips, straw hats or Scotch caps on their heads; their naked breasts disclosed the wool upon them through rents in the flying wide dungaree shirt. And a woman had command of these fellows, had held them obedient, and brought them and the ship in safety to that part of the ocean in which the Mowbray had encountered them! Who had ever heard of such a thing? It was a fact worth going to sea to realize. 'How George will laugh and doubt when I tell him!' Miss Vanderholt thought, as she looked with wonder, deepening ever, at the amazing figure built up of petticoat-trousers and blue jacket, very plentifully braided.

When the sugar was on board, Captain Lind, calling to the man in the opera-cap, said:

'See that cask safely stowed. This is a chance that mightn't happen again 'twixt here and New York; and I tell you, mister,' said she, turning to Mr. Vanderholt, 'that I have missed the sugar in my cup of tea. I have a sweet tooth. Who is that gent?' she continued, looking at Mr. Tweed.

'He is the mate of my schooner,' answered Mr. Vanderholt.

'Then, see here, Mr. Prunes,' she cried, with a womanly yell that broadened Tweed's mouth from ear to ear; 'whilst we're at tea below, you'll see that this gentleman has some refreshment. He can ask for what he likes, and if we've got it, he can have it. Send the boy aft, Mr. Prunes.'

All this was addressed to the tasselled seaman who was apparently the mate of the ship.

Captain Lind then conducted Mr. Vanderholt and his daughter below into the cabin—a little interior, rude in comparison with the Mowbray's cabin, yet comfortable and breezy with the panting of the heel of a windsail, as the swing of the barque swelled the mouth of the tube aloft. There were two little cabins aft, and two little cabins forward, and a little square table amidships. A small black boy arrived.

'Bring tea and biscuit, and tell Mr. Prunes to give you some lump sugar. Don't eat none. Now spring! Hurrah!'

The lad, with a grin, leapt up the ladder, and the soles of his naked feet glimmered like bars of yellow soap as he disappeared.

'I never heard before of a lady taking command of a ship,' said Mr. Vanderholt.

Captain Lind pulled her cap off, and disclosed a head of rich brown hair, cut short, and divided in the middle.

'Well,' she answered, stretching forth her hand as an invitation to Miss Violet to seat herself, 'I'm not what is called in your country a lady. I'm just a plain Amurrican woman. Of course you've never heard of such a thing as a woman in charge of a ship. Are you an Englishman, sir?'

'Why, yes. My name is foreign—Vanderholt; but I am an Englishman.'

'Names don't signify now in the nationalities of folks,' exclaimed Captain Lind, smiling at Miss Violet. 'Look at Amurrica. They're coming fast, and when they settle they call themselves Amurricans. I can tell you, sir, there are very few Amurricans in Amurrica. Who's the Amurrican of to-day? Is he Mr. O'Brien, or is he Herr Von Dunks?'

'You asked me if I was an Englishman,' said Mr. Vanderholt, who was greatly entertained by the singular figure this strange, fine, original woman presented, as she sat at table, talking, and waiting for a cup of tea.

'Yes; because if you're an Englishman you'll be a century astern of us in Amurrica. We had to show you the road in nearly everything of consequence. We gave you steam,' said the lady, coolly making way for the negro boy, who just then arrived with tea—a japanned tray with an old silver teapot upon it and a bowl of broken lump sugar.

The captain instantly put one of these lumps into her mouth, and continued to talk and suck while she poured out the milkless tea, and shoved a plate of white biscuit towards Miss Vanderholt.

'We gave you steam, sir, and electricity. We taught you ship-building; for, until the Amurricans began to build, shapeliness and speed weren't known to the world. We offer you the double topsail. You'll take twenty years to consider it,' she said, leaning back in her chair with a sneer, while she lifted her saucer and teacup and began to sip in a ladylike way.

'I had no idea that we were so much in your debt,' said Mr. Vanderholt. 'But I tell you what: if you can induce the ladies of Great Britain to study navigation, and take charge of ships, after the example you are setting, there are a great many husbands who will be everlastingly obliged to you for indicating a new source of income for the family, and a sure chance for peace at home.'

'You don't reckon, p'r'aps, that we Amurricans gave you electricity?' said the lady skipper, who seemed to find something suspicious in Mr. Vanderholt's answer. 'Who flew the kite? Who brought fire from the skies so that a man might know what to do with it?'

Vanderholt, holding his countenance behind his beard, respectfully bowed and sipped at his cup.

'Are there other female captains like yourself in your country?' asked Miss Vanderholt.

'Two,' she answered; 'there may be more. I'm a third, certainly. Stop till I spin the yarn. My father was a sea-captain, and when I was a girl carried me with him on several voyages. My husband was the master of a ship, and I always went to sea with him, and could discharge his duties as well as he, and sometimes better. He died, and left me a childless widow. But I was not poor. What with my father, and my husband, and here and there a legacy, I had got to own a few thousand dollars, which I didn't quite know what to do with, for I couldn't get value enough out of the money to live upon.'

Mr. Vanderholt pricked up his ears. Any reference to dollars and interest engaged him. He listened, and forgot he was at sea.

'Till one day,' continued Captain Lind, 'being at New York—I wasn't then living in that city—I happened to pick up the New York Hatchet, and, after reading it a bit, came across this passage——'

She left the table and entered an after-berth. Mr. Vanderholt exchanged looks with his daughter. Captain Lind returned, holding an old newspaper. She seated herself, and, popping another lump of sugar into her mouth, sucked, with a grave face, whilst she opened the paper. Then, when the sugar was gone, she read aloud:

'"Mrs. Sarah Davis, of New York, has just brilliantly passed her examination for a certificate as shipmaster and pilot, and, on receiving her certificate, will, it is announced, take the command of the yacht Emerald. This lady is, it is said, not the first of her sex who has been in command of a vessel. Mrs. Mary Miller, of New Orleans, obtained a master's certificate a few years ago, and is now captain of the full-rigged merchant-ship Saline."

'When I read this, an idea came into my head, and I wasn't long in making up my mind. There's no obligation in my country to take out a master's certificate, any more than there is in yourn; but I was determined to let 'm know I was fit to command a ship, and I presented myself, and received some handsome compliments on a quality of all-round knowledge sights in excess of what the average captain carries to the ocean with him. This is my third voyage in the Wife's Hope.'

'Why the Wife's Hope?' exclaimed Mr. Vanderholt. 'You told me you were a widow.'

'I named her the Wife's Hope,' answered Captain Lind, 'that she might encourage married women cussed with drinking, loafing, idling, gambling, worthless husbands, to direct their attention to a noble pursuit which would carry them leagues clear of the troubles of home, put money in their pockets, enable them to see the world and life, and help them,' said she, putting another lump of sugar into her mouth, 'to acquire that spirit of independence without which woman must always be meaner than the plantation slave, and her case a gone sight more hopeless.'

This little speech was delivered with some dignity. Mr. Vanderholt was impressed, and ran his eyes over her figure, and looked at her face with a countenance of earnest respect. The sugar in her mouth did not impair the stateliness of her manner and utterance.

'It would be more respectable and quiet than a divorce,' the captain went on. 'You'd find no bad husband going to sea with his wife. The cuss wouldn't have the liver for it.'

'The star of your figure-head,' said Miss Violet, 'I suppose, is the art of seamanship, and the figure stretching her hand towards it symbolizes woman rapturously greeting a new calling?'

'You've hit it down to the heels,' answered Captain Lind. 'It was my notion. Quite a pome, ain't it? Were you pleased with it as you came along?'

'We were delighted,' said Mr. Vanderholt. 'I said to my daughter, or, if I did not say it, it was in my mind to speak it, "There is in that barque a strong original genius." America should distinguish you, captain.'

The captain bowed and smiled, and pushed the sugar-bowl away, that she might not be tempted by its contents.

'Aren't you afraid of your sailors?' asked Miss Vanderholt.

'Afraid!' echoed the captain, bridling. 'What is there in sailors to be afraid of? I have revolvers, and I know how to load and shoot, and I should no more hesitate to send a ball through a mutinous seaman's nut than put one of them lumps into my mouth. Don't you ever be afraid of any man, miss. Why man bosses woman's jest a question of muscle. My crew soon learnt the art of jumping to the music of my voice. I'm a little shrill—don't reckon that I sink my sex in these clothes—and it may be that sailors, being accustomed mainly to voices deep with drink and hollow with vice, run the more nimbly for being called to in their mother's tender notes. Will you have a cigar, sir?'

And, without awaiting Mr. Vanderholt's reply, she entered a cabin, and, after a short absence, returned with a box of cigars, a couple of loaded revolvers, and two long, dangerous knives.

'They need no better discipline whenever it comes to it,' said she, helping herself to another lump of sugar. 'Take a cigar, sir?'

Meanwhile, on deck the mate of the Mowbray conversed with the mate of the Wife's Hope. Mr. Tweed had asked for no other refreshment than a glass of rum and cold water. He stood sucking a pipe in the gangway, ready for the appearance of Mr. Vanderholt and his daughter on deck, and beside him was Mr. Prunes. The first dog-watch had begun; it had seemed, however, to Mr. Tweed that it was all dog-watch with the crew of the Wife's Hope; they only appeared to lounge a little more now that one of them had struck eight times on the forecastle bell. The sun was still high, but his splendour was deepening, and the lights which sparkled about the decks of the barque and in her sides were rich; she floated in the silence upon the dark-blue sea, with the whole lazy spirit of the hour in the sleepy droop of her canvas and the indolent roll of her hull.

'That's a fine schooner of yourn,' said Mr. Prunes to Mr. Tweed. 'It's like having the Wight aboard to see her. Bound to the Equator, eh? And what are you going to load there?'

He pulled his long goatee, with a laugh that struck a shudder through his cap.

'This seems a pretty comfortable old barkey,' said Tweed, slowly looking round him. 'Eighty days in finding your way here? Well, yer might have done worse,' he added, with a look aloft. 'Doomed if I could keep my face when I saw your skipper! It isn't that all that's becoming in a female don't unite in her; it's her sex that makes me laugh.'

'I shall be blamed glad when the voyage is ended,' said Prunes, pulling off his cap, and wiping his forehead with it; and now Mr. Tweed was not a little astonished to remark that this seaman wore his hair in a net. 'I signed more for a lark than for a berth. They told me that the Wife's Hope was in want of a chief mate. She was in Calcutta, and I hadn't been long out of 'orspital. I knew she was commanded by a woman, and reckoned upon being treated as captain, in fact, though she might call herself the old man. Never was a chap more mistaken. If she hasn't held her own as master of this vessel from the moment the pilot left us, I'll swallow that pipe.'

'D'ye tell me she understands all about the manoeuvring of a ship?' said Tweed.

'There's no man out of the Thames or Mersey who's got a trick above her, blow high, blow low, bet all you're a-going to take up!' exclaimed Prunes. 'See her put this craft about! It's yachting for nice discernment. I never knew any master keep his weather-eye lifting as this female do. She can smell what's coming along. She's reefed down when the sky's been blue as it is, all hands have been growling and laughing at her, and a quarter of an hour later the barque's been on her beam-ends, and the sea just one yell o' froth!'

'Doomed if it 'ud be a believable thing, if it couldn't be seen,' said Tweed. 'What made t'other mate leave the ship?'

'The same as'll make me glad to get to New York,' answered Mr. Prunes, putting on his cap, and caressing the tassel, whilst his eyes met in a squint of earnestness in the grog-flowered countenance of Mr. Tweed. He paused, and seemed to reflect.

'What is it?' said Mr. Tweed.

Mr. Prunes began to nod at him, and then said in a low, confidential voice, and a glance aft at the companion-hatch:

'She's in want of that sort of mate which ashore they calls a husband.'

'Ha!' said Mr. Tweed; 'and it drove the other chap out of a good berth?'

'Well, there was a many quarrels, I believe, afore they got to Calcutta. Thinking that I might stand the better with her, seeing that I'm middling young, and that the sea hasn't robbed me of all that I owe to my mother, who was the handsomest woman in Shadwell, I kept dark about my 'ome, and to this bloomed hour she don't know that I've got a wife and three young uns awaiting my return in the little house I left 'em in at Stepney.'

'I'd up and tell her the truth, if I were you,' said Tweed.

A gleam of cunning twinkled in Mr. Prunes's eyes.

'I've been pretty comfortable for eighty days,' said he, 'under an error. There's no call now to correct it, seeing that the end of the voyage isn't fur off.'

Whilst he spoke, Captain Lind and Mr. and Miss Vanderholt were coming on deck. The captain sang out in a shrill, bantam-like voice, that caused Prunes to glance somewhat sheepishly at Tweed:

'The lady and gentleman are going aboard their schooner! See their boat all ready!'

Then, springing on to the rail with wonderful activity, she hailed the Mowbray, and asked Captain Glew for his latitude and longitude. This she received, and entered upon a piece of paper with a face of triumph. Then, turning to Mr. Vanderholt, she exclaimed:

'See here, sir! A mile out, and the error may be his.'

'I am lost in admiration, I assure you,' said Vanderholt. 'I would rather have met this barque than the Flying Dutchman. It will be far more interesting to me to talk about than an apparition. It is really, captain, an extraordinary departure! I wish you prosperity, I am sure, ma'am.'

He bowed low. The captain of the Wife's Hope then shook hands cordially with Miss Vanderholt. Tweed got into the boat, and the party returned to the Mowbray. Just before sunset a breeze came right along the red, shortening shaft of glory, as though it blew out of the sun. Both vessels immediately trimmed for their respective courses, and in an hour's time the Wife's Hope had vanished in the starlit dusk of the evening.