There were more verses. The chorus was always the same; it burst with hurricane power from the lips of the English seamen, who sang with passion, as though in defiance of the Dutch and Spanish listeners; and, indeed, the matter of the song was headlong and irresistible. The lady standing at the bulwark turned her head to listen, but when the noise had ended she sank her face afresh, put her elbow on the rail, leaned her chin upon her hand, and so gazed straight out into the darkness.

Much had she to think of, and her weight of memory would be the heavier, and the color of it the sadder for her inability to communicate a syllable of what worked in her brain, when she thought of the wreck in which her mother may have perished, or of the livid cinder of an island on which she had been imprisoned for four days, of her present condition, and of her future. I wondered as I looked at her whether, if she had my language or I hers, she would be impassioned and dramatic in the recital of her adventures, or whether she would talk quietly, describe without vehemence of speech or motion, prove herself, in short, the dignified, apparently cold woman I found her in her compelled silence or speech? This I wondered while I watched her with an irritable yearning after words that I might speak. What had been the two sailors’ behavior to her on the island? Where and how had she slept of nights there? What had been her sufferings in the open boat? Who was she? Was she visiting Madrid to presently return to South America? She troubled my curiosity. She was as a book written in an unintelligible tongue, but curiously and beautifully embellished with plates which enable you to guess at the choiceness and profusion of the feast you are unable to sit at.

Now Yan Bol sang a song. His voice rent the night, and I observed the lady erect her figure as though she hearkened with astonishment. I walked aft to take a look at the compass, and to see that the binnacle lamp was burning well.

“Who is this at the wheel?”

“Jorge, señor.”

“You don’t speak English, do you?”

The man understood me, and shook his head. “Pretty cool fists,” thought I, “to send this poor devil aft, while you enjoy yourselves with your songs and pipes and grog! Here is a shipwrecked man; what care you? He is a poor rag of a man, and very fit to be put upon; so it has been, ’Aft with ye and grip them spokes, while a better man than e’er a mumping Spaniard in all Americay comes for’ard and enjoys himself.” But it was not a matter to be mended while the fellows were in the full of their jollification.

“Como se llama esto?” exclaimed a voice at my elbow, and a small hand, gleaming with rings, was projected into the sheen of the binnacle lamp.

I started, conceiving that the lady was still at the bulwark rail, deep in thought or listening to the singing.

“I do not understand,” said I.

“Ow you call, señor?” exclaimed Jorge.

She pointed to the compass, wanting its name in English.

I pronounced the word and she echoed it very clearly; then lightly laying her hand upon my arm she took a few steps forward, and, pointing to the sea, asked again in Spanish what that was called. In this way I gave her some dozen words; and when I believed she was about to ask for more terms she, with her hand laid lightly on my arm, led me back to the wheel, and, pointing to the compass, pronounced its name in English, then indicated the sea, uttering the word, and so she went through the list she had got, blundering but once, at the word “star,” which she pronounced zar.

By this time the singing had come to an end; the starbowlines, as the starboard watch were then termed, were dropping below; the lady went to the skylight and looked at the time; then, coming up to me, she put her hand out and said:

“Buenas noches, caballero.”

I answered, “Good-night, señorita.”

She shook her head; by the cabin lamplight flowing up through the open frames I saw her smiling. She repeated, “Good-night, caballero” in Spanish. Seeing her wish, I said good-night in the same language, imitating her accent.

“Es admirable!” she exclaimed, and then went toward the companion way, meaning to go below.

But I had resolved that this handsome, amiable, lovely Spanish lady should be made as comfortable on board us as the resources of the brig permitted, and I detained her by a polite gesture while I called to one of the men forward to send Antonio aft. The fellow was turned in and he kept us waiting ten minutes, during which the lady and I stood dumb as a pair of ghosts, she no doubt wondering why I held her on deck, though she did not exhibit the least uneasiness in her bearing so far as I was able to make out in the starlit darkness. When Antonio appeared I requested him to ask the lady if she wished for anything the brig could supply her with. Antonio translated sulkily and sleepily.

“No, señor,” said he, “the lady wants for nothing. She is wearied and entreats permission to retire to rest.”

I was convinced that the villain had manufactured this answer to enable him to return speedily to his own bed. But I was helpless.

When the lady went below I told Antonio to send one of the men out of my watch to relieve Jorge at the wheel, and I then descended into the cabin to make a report to Greaves and to hear how he did. Jimmy was clearing up for the night. I inquired after the captain, and the youth told me he was asleep.

“Has he complained of pain?”

“No, master.”

“Where’s Galloon?”

“Along with the captain, master.”

“Has the dog been fed to-day?”

“Oh, yes. He had a copper-fastened buster at noon—a heart o’ oak blow-out.”

“What did you give him?” said I, not doubting the lad’s affection for the dog, but fearing that the poor brute might have been overlooked in the hurry and excitement of the day.

“As much beefsteak as he could swallow, master.”

“There are no beefsteaks on board this ship,” said I. “If the captain and Galloon were here we should have a concert. But I believe you when you tell me you have fed the dog.”

“More’n he wanted, master.”

I bade him put a spare mattress into my bunk—we carried a stock of spare bedding, a slop lot of Amsterdam stuff—and I then returned on deck. Two hours of watch lay before me, and my heart went in a gallop and my brain in a waltz through the earlier part of that time. I found leisure for thought now; the hush of the ocean night was upon the brig; no sound reached me from the forecastle. The stars shone brightly in the dark sky, and many meteors of crystal white fires ran and broke over our mastheads, bursting like rockets immeasurably distant, and leaving glowing trails, which palpitated for some minutes.

The hope of the voyage was realized. Underfoot lay half a million of dollars, and six thousand pounds of it were to be mine! Is it wonderful that my spirits should have sang, that heart and brain should have danced? But with this noble fulfillment of the half-hearted hope of many weeks was mixed the romance of the presence of a handsome Spanish woman in the ship. One thought of her as coming on board with the dollars—as the princess of the island pining for civilization and shipping herself and the treasure of her little dominion for the life and delights of a great and populous city of the Old World. She it was, I think, that set my brain a-waltzing, if it were the dollars which made my heart gallop and my spirit shout within me.

I tell you it was an odd, intoxicating mixture of the picturesque, the heroic, the romantic for a plain young sailor man like me to put his lips to and drain down. To be sure the influence of the Spanish lady upon me was no more than the influence of bright eyes, of white teeth, of a fine person, of a head of magnificent hair. And what sort of influence would that be, pray? Why, heart alive! Oh! what but a mingling of light with thought, an aroma to haunt all fancy of other things, giving a sparkle to the commonplace, putting foam and sweetness into cups of flatness. Do you who are reading this know how deep, know by the experience of months of weevils, corned horse, and the curses of constipated sailors, how deep is the deep monotony of life on shipboard? If the depth of this monotony be known to you, then will you understand why it should be that the presence, yea, the presence merely of a handsome woman, her glances, the flash of her white teeth, the eloquent hinting by movement and posture at a hidden shape of beauty, should mingle a few threads of gold with the coarse gray, brine-drenched worsted of the sailor’s daily life—of such a daily life as mine; should touch with luster his mechanic habits and trains of thought as the wake of his ship in the night of the tropic ocean is beautified with the fiery seeds and radiant foam-bells of the sea glow.

And now I have intelligently and poetically explained why it was that I walked out some time of the remainder of my watch on deck, with my blood in a dance and my spirits singing clearly. But as I paced I grew grave under the shadow of a fancy—not yet to call it fear. Suppose the crew should rise and seize the brig? This was a notion that was fixedly present to Greaves during the outward passage, because he had known when I doubted, that the half million of dollars were in the ship in the cave, and upon that conviction he could base acute realization of what might happen when the money was transhipped. I, on the other hand, had never seriously considered the possibility of piracy. The money must be in the brig before I could solemnly compass all the responsibility its possession implied. But the money was now on board, and six thousand pounds of it were mine, and my spirits fell as I paced the quarter-deck looking around the wide gloom and saying to myself: “Suppose this treasure of half a million of dollars should presently start the men into a determination to seize the brig! There were but two of us—Greaves and I—at our end of the ship. Could we count upon Jimmy? At the other end was now an addition of two Spaniards—cut-throats at heart for all one knew—with knives as thirsty for blood as an English sailor’s throat for rum.”

Why should I have thought thus? Nothing whatever had happened to put fancies of this sort into my head. Was it not the being able to understand that thirty thousand of the thousands in the lazarette were to be mine that set me reflecting with a sudden dark anxiety, when the question arose: Suppose the crew should rise and take the brig?

There was comfort, however, if not safety in this consideration: not a man forward, from Bol down to Jimmy, had any knowledge of navigation. What, then, would they be able to do with the brig if they seized her? They might spread a chart of the world and say: “Here we are now, and there is America, and there are the East Indies, and down there is New Holland, and up there is China, and if we steadily head in one direction, no matter at what point of the compass the bowsprit looks, we are bound to run something down, whether it be a continent or one of the poles.”

Well, that is how sailors might talk in a book designed for the young. Before the seamen forward rose and seized this brig, that was now a very valuable bottom, as cargoes then went, they would ask of one another: “What are we going to do with the ship when we have her? Where are we going to carry her, and, having hit on a spot, how are we going to navigate her there?” This I chose to think, and, indeed, I had no doubt of it, and I drew comfort from the conclusion; but all the same, my spirits, having sunk, remained low throughout the rest of my watch.

I was uneasy. I caught myself arresting my steps when my walk carried me toward the gangway, whenever I heard the sound of a man’s voice. O God, to think of what a hell of passions this tiny speck of brig was capable of holding! To think of the large and bloody tragedy this minim of the building yards could find a theater for! Never had I so utterly felt human insignificance at sea as I did this night, when I looked over the rail and searched the smoky void of the horizon for the smudge of the island, till, for the relief of my sight, I watched a star.

“I’ll tell you what it is, William Fielding,” said I to myself, “your blood is over-heated, your spirits are over-excited. By this picking up to-day of a fortune—a noble fortune to you, my boy—of six thousand pounds, and by the sudden and novel companionship of a dark and splendid lady, the pulses of your body have been set a-hammering too fast. They must sleep, or excitement will make you sick.”

Eight bells were struck. Bol came along, and I went below to see if the captain was awake. He addressed me on my entering his cabin. I reported the little there was to tell. He said that the pain in his side was easier; that he could move without the anguish of the afternoon.

“I shall lie by all night,” said he, “and hope to be up and about again in the morning.”

He then inquired about the situation of the island, the appearance of the weather, the sail under which the brig lay, whether any vessel had hove in sight, and added:

“If you should awaken in your watch, go on deck and take a look round; though I trust Bol.”

I went on deck to give the Dutchman the bearings of the island and our distance from it. He was sullen with sleep. Likely as not, the can which Jimmy had filled contained more liquor than should have gone forward at once.

“Keep a bright lookout,” said I. “There may come a shift of wind that will put the island under our lee, with nobody to guess that it’s at hand until we’re upon it.”

“Ow, I’ll keep a bright lookout,” he answered; “but vould to Cott dere vhas no more lookouts for me! I vhas dam’d sick of looking out. I hov been looking out, by tunder, for ofer twenty year, and hov seen noting till dis day; and den she vhas to be carried round der Hoorn to Amsterdam before she vhas all right.”

I went to my berth. Excitement had subsided since my few words with Greaves. I pitched into my bunk, and was sound asleep in a minute. I was awakened by the weight of a heavy hand and by the sound of a deep voice.

“Mr. Fielding, I do not like der look of der veather. I believe dere vhas a gale of vind on her vhay here.”

“What is the hour, Bol?”

“She vhas a quarter-past dree.”

I went on deck, and observed that the sky in the north was as black as pitch. Overhead the stars were dim and few, but they burnt freely and brightly in the south. I caught a moaning tone in the wind, that had considerably freshened since I left the deck; and the brig, hove-to under whole topsails, was lying over somewhat steeply, with the seas to windward slapping at her rounded side, hissing off in pale yeasty sheets, and flickering snappishly into the gloom to leeward.

“Call all hands and close-reef both topsails,” said I.

I ran below to report to Greaves. A bracket-lamp burnt feebly in his cabin. He was wide awake, and his dark eyes, with the glance of the small yellow flame upon them, looked twice their usual size.

“It is coming on to blow, sir.”

“Well, snug down and put yourself to leeward of the island, anyhow.”

“Shall I heave her to, then, for watering?”

“Judge for yourself. The brig is in your hands. If it comes hard let her go. Keep a sharp lookout for the island. Have you its bearings?”

“Bol should have them,” said I. “I have been turned in since midnight.”

I regained the deck. The crew were yawling at the reef-tackles and singing out at the main braces to trim the yards for reefing. There was much noise. The wind was steadily freshening, and through the groans and pipings of it aloft ran the sharp, salt hiss of small seas, bursting suddenly and with temper under the level lash of the wind. I shouted to Bol, who came out of the blackness in the waist.

“Where do you make the island?”

“She’ll bear sou’east,” he answered.

I stepped to the compass.

“There’s been a shift of wind since midnight. It was nor’-nor’west, and now it’s come north. Since when?”

“Ow, she freshened out of der north in a leedle squall. Dot vhas vhen I called you.”

I swept the wide, dark reach of the southern line of sea with the glass; but had the island been as big as England it would have been sunk in the peculiar smoky thickness of the dusk that yet, strangely enough, formed a clear atmosphere for the stars to shine through. I say I swept the ocean with the glass, but to no purpose. An old sailor once laughed at me for using an ordinary day telescope at night. I told him that what would magnify a colored object would magnify a shadow; and he afterward owned that he talked out of prejudice; had looked through a telescope since in the darkness and discovered that I was right.

The men reefed the topsails smartly, and not being able to see the island, and not choosing to trust Bol’s conjectures as to its situation, I headed the brig due east, setting the reefed foresail and trysail along with some fore-and-aft canvas to give her heels. It blackened rapidly overhead; every star perished. In a few minutes there was not a light visible up in God’s heights; all the fire was below, and the sea was beginning to run in flames like oil burning. This shining in the sea was a blindness to the sight, for it brought the sky down black as a midnight fog to the very sip and spit of the surge. We held on, crushing through it, for the wind having swiftly swept up into a fresh breeze, had on a sudden roared into half a gale, and the brig was smoking forward as she plunged, with a heel to leeward when the sea took her, that brought the white and fiery smother within hand-reach of the gangway rails.

I stood at the binnacle; Bol was at my side; two hands were stationed on the lookout; the crew remained on deck. They had got to hear that Bol had lost the bearings of the island, and though the watch might be called, no man was going below on such a night of sudden tempest as this, with a hurricane away behind the windward blackness, for all we knew, and this side the horizon as deadly a heap of fangs as ever bit a ship in twain.

“I vhas glad if he lightened,” said Bol. “It vhas strange if der island did not show on der starboard quarter there.”

“It was strange,” said I, mimicking him in my temper, “that you should fall asleep in your watch on deck with land close aboard ye.”

“By Cott, den——”

Rain at that instant struck the brig in a whole sheet of water. It came along with a roar and shriek of wind and wet. The cataractal drench was swept in steam off our decks by the black squall it blew along in; the fierce slap of it fired the sea, and we washed through an ocean of light, pale and green.

“By Cott, den——” bawled Bol.

“Breakers ahead!” roared a voice from the forecastle.

“Breakers on the lee-bow!” cried another voice.

It was like being blinded and shocked by lightning to hear those cries. They were paralyzing. For an instant I looked and listened idly.

Then—“Hard a-starboard every spoke! Hard a-starboard every spoke!” I shouted, and flung myself upon the wheel to help the men there, roaring meanwhile to Bol to call hands to the main braces and to get the fore tack and sheet raised. He rushed forward, thundering. Never had Dutchman the like of such a voice as Bol.

The brig was in the wind; she was pitching furiously head to sea, the canvas thrashing in the blackness, the gale splitting in lunatic shrieks upon every rope and spar, the strange, hoarse shouts of the seamen rising and falling in shuddering notes upon the clamor that surged above as the water rolled below.

I had fled from the wheel to the side to look for the land, and was straining my vision against the wet obscurity in vain search of the white water of breakers, or of the overhanging midnight shadow that should denote the island close aboard, when—the brig struck! a violent shock ran through the length of her; every timber thrilled as though a mine had been sprung under her keel. “O God, that it should have come to it!” I thought.

“Round with that fore yard, men,” I roared; “don’t let her hang! don’t let her hang!” Again the brig struck. A sort of raging chorus full of curses and the passion of terror broke from the seamen as they dragged. The rain cleared as suddenly as it had begun, the brig’s head was paying off, and my heart swelled in thanks as she listed over to larboard, trembling to a blow of sea that rose in a mountain of milk upon her bow.

“Where are you, Fielding?” shouted the voice of Greaves.

“Here, sir.”

He was standing in the hatch, gripping the companion for support, but his voice had the old ring. “What have you done with the brig?”

“White water was just now reported. I don’t see it. I don’t see the land—yet we struck.”

“No,” he answered coolly, “it was we who were struck. There is no land. Look there—and there—and there! Those are your shoals!”

At the moment of his speaking one of the sublimest, most beautiful sights which the ocean, prodigal as she is in marvels of terror and splendor, can offer to the sight of man was visible round about us. In at least a dozen different parts of the blackness that stooped to the luminous peaks of the seas I beheld flaming fountains, glittering lines rising and feathering to the gale, coming and going, blowing pale and yet splendid—every jet so luminous that the scoring of the darkness by it was as defined as the track of a rocket. They soared and fell in a breathing way, some near, some afar, ever varying their distances, and one snored like an escape of steam within a biscuit-toss of our weather beam, and the fiery shower flashed on the wind betwixt our masts with a hiss like a volley of shot tearing the surface of water.

“A school of whales,” shouted Greaves. “One of them plumped into us. Now, get your topsail aback, Fielding, get your topsail aback, and stop her till the beasts go clear, or they’ll be butting us into staves. Jump for the well and get a cast.”

The men, hearing their captain’s voice, were quieted. They came to the braces, and, without disorder or any note of cursing terror in their voices, brought the brig to a halt. I dropped the rod and found the vessel stanch; sounded the well four or five times, and always found her stanch. The wondrous luminous appearances vanished, and the blacker hours of the night before the dawn closed upon us in an impenetrable dye, but with less weight in the wind and with less fire in the sea.

“Furl the foresail and let the brig lie as she is till dawn,” said Greaves, and walked slowly from one side of the deck to the other, looking forth, pausing long to look; then, with slow motions, he went below, and stretched himself at full length upon a locker, with a hand upon his side.

My watch came round at four; but, in any case, I should have watched the brig through the darkness. Some while before dawn the wind was spent, the stars glowing, the sea fast slackening its heave, with the muck that had troubled and drenched us settling away in a shadow south and west.

At last broke the day. Melancholy is daybreak at sea. There is nothing sadder in nature; nothing that so sinks the spirits of the watcher who suffers himself to be visited by the full spirit of the sight. On shore there is the chirrup and harmonies of birds, the rosy streaking of the sky over the hilltops; the vane of the church spire burns, the cock crows heartily, the farmyard is in motion, the smell of the country rises in an incense as the sun springs into the sky. But at sea the cold iron-gray of the breaking morn is reflected in the boundless waste. There is nothing to catch the light of the springing sun save the clouds. The vast solitude brims into the unbroken distance, and cold is the ashen sky and cold the picture of the ship, as it steals out of the darkness of the night. The melancholy, however, is but in the dawn’s beginning. When the sun rises, there is a splendor of colors at sea which you will not find ashore. The ocean is a mirror that reverberates the light of day. Times are when the deep flings its own prismatic glories upon the sky. This have I marked at sunrise, when the flash of the luminary has sunk into the heart of the sea, when all is blueness and dazzle below, and, above, a sky of high-compacted cloud, delicate as flowers and figures of frost and snow upon a windowpane, charged with the colors of the great eye of ocean looking up at it.

“There’s the island,” said I to myself.

I snatched up the glass, and resolved the tiny piece of shading upon the horizon into the proportions of the ugly rock of cinders. It was twelve or fourteen miles distant down on the lee quarter.

“The deuce!” thought I. “What has been our drift? Where has the brig been running to? And yet Greaves told me he could trust Bol!”

I looked through the skylight, and immediately the captain, who lay upon the locker, opened his eyes and fastened them upon me.

“The island is in sight, sir.”

“How far distant?”

I made answer. He asked a few questions, then bade me shift the brig’s helm for the rock to complete our watering. Twenty minutes later we were standing once more for the island, with all plain sail heaped upon the brig, and a quiet air of wind blowing dead on end over the taffrail.

CHAPTER XX.

WE START FOR HOME.

We sent a hand aloft as before to keep a sharp lookout. The island lay square in the north, and while we hung hove-to off the reefs, at any hour something large and armed might come sailing up from the horizon at the back, and heave the breast of a royal over the western or eastern point ere we could guess that there was anything within leagues and leagues of us. Yan Bol took charge of the longboat and went ashore. It was a fine morning, but the sky looked dim, like a blue eye after tears; the sun had his sting of yesterday, but not his flash. A long swell swung through the sea, but the heave was out of the north, and we lay south, the land between; it was smooth here or we could have done little in the way of watering. The corners of the land illustrated the weight of the swell; the white water burst in clouds there, and the noise of it came along with the voice of a gathering storm.

Greaves was so much better of the pain in his side that he sat at breakfast and took a chair upon the deck afterward. He called me to his cabin, while we were heading for the island, and asked me to look at his ribs. There was a little discoloration, such as might attend a bruise—no more. I pressed the bones, but he did not wince. I dug somewhat deep in the soft part just under the liver, but he uttered no sound. The pain was very nearly gone, he told me; yet he looked pale, and his eyes wanted their former light and old activity of glance.

I was busy in bringing the brig to a stand while Greaves was at breakfast, and on passing the skylight and looking down, I saw the lady Aurora seated at table with him. When he came on deck after breakfast, she followed; Jimmy placed chairs and she was about to sit, but catching sight of me she approached, bowing low, with a fine arch smile, and her hand extended. I supposed she meant merely to shake me by the hand, but on grasping my fingers she retained them, and I felt a foolish blush upon my face, as she drew me to the binnacle stand, at which she pointed, saying, “compass.” She then led me to the side, and projecting her glittering hand over the rail, said “sea.” Then, looking aloft, she laughed and shook her head, and cried:

“No sar, señor.”

“Star,” said I.

“Si—star—gracias,” she exclaimed.

“Had you not better mind your eye?” exclaimed Greaves, as we approached him. “Somebody’s told her the value of your share in the chinks below. She’s no clipper, but she’s got a devilish fine bow and run, and you’d find her bends sweetly good, I’ll warrant you, were you to careen her and clear her sides. By Isten! Fielding, she’ll be forging ahead and taking you in tow if you don’t mind your helm.”

I made no reply. I did not greatly relish Greaves’ humor. The girl’s ignorance of our tongue was an appeal to our respect. But then I was twenty-four—an age of sensibility. Greaves was an older man, and though I love his memory, I must say the sea had a little blunted some of the finer points of feeling in him.

Madam Aurora took the chair which Jimmy had placed, and she and Greaves sat together, but in silence. Some business of the brig occupied my attention. Presently Greaves told me to go below and breakfast.

“I will look after the ship,” said he.

I went below and made a good breakfast. There was a dish of terrapin; the Dutch sailor Wirtz, the burly, carroty man, with the deep roaring voice—but all our Dutchmen had deep voices—had somewhere learnt the art of cooking terrapin. He had stayed in the brig to dress this delicious meat, and Frank Hals, the cook, had gone ashore in his place in the longboat. I fared sumptuously, washing the delicate morsels down with some of the Casada’s cocoa, which had been prepared for the pot by Thomas Teach, who professed to have learnt what he knew under this head in two voyages he had made to the Dutch Spice Islands.

Galloon had followed me into the cabin, and bore me company. He sat upon his chair and gazed at me affectionately when I talked to him. Often had I talked out my mind to Galloon. Often in quiet, lonely watches, during the outward passage, had I held his ears, while his fore paws rested upon my knees, and given loose to the imaginations which the prospect of the promise of realizing thirty thousand dollars raised up in me. And then, again, I loved this dog as the savior of my life. Never could I look into his affectionate, liquid, intelligent eye, but that I would think to myself, and often say aloud to him, dog as he was, a poor four-footed beast, soulless, as it is commonly supposed, of affections to be best won by kicks and curses—that he had, by saving my life, become in a sense the creator of a man, the renewer of a being deemed by his own species immortal in spirit, so that whatever I did a dog would be answerable for; the existence of all passions in me, my pleasures and hopes and griefs; nay, my marriage, should ever I marry, and the children I begot, would be all chargeable upon a poor dog, God wot! a strange thing to reflect on by one who has been made to believe, all his life, that he is only a little lower than the angels, and yet true as the blessed sunlight itself; for if it had not been for Galloon, long ago I should have been—what? the roe of a herring, perhaps, the liver of a cod—instead of a man, capable of looking back, through a long avenue of years, and of moralizing thus.

When I came on deck I found Antonio standing in front of Greaves, cap in hand, translating for him and the lady. On my appearing, Miss Aurora exclaimed quickly and eagerly to the Spaniard, who turning to me, said, squinting as he spoke:

“The señorita has met you before.”

“Where?” said I.

“At Lima, señor.”

“Never was at Lima in my life.”

He translated; she made a little dignified gesture of impatience.

“The lady says that she has met you at the house of——” and here Antonio named a Spanish merchant of Lima.

“No,” said I, looking at her and shaking my head.

“Yes,” she cried in English, and spoke rapidly to Antonio.

“She is not mistaken, caballero. Two thumbs are alike, but two faces never.”

“You never were at Lima?” said Greaves.

“Never,” I exclaimed, laughing.

“Let her have her way,” said Greaves. “Contrive to have visited Lima, and to have been a bosom friend of Don——,” and he named the Spanish merchant. “What does it signify? May it not mean that she is in love with you, and that her professing to have met you is a Spanish maiden’s device to cover an advance, as a soldier would say.”

Antonio continued to squint. I viewed him narrowly, and was satisfied that he had not understood the captain’s words.

“Beg the lady to continue her narrative,” said Greaves.

She addressed Antonio in a few sentences at a time. Occasionally her language was above his understanding; he would look at her stupidly, until she gave him another nod. How rich was her Spanish, how honey-sweet her utterance! It was like listening to singing. The memories which thronged her recital delicately colored with blood her pale olive cheek; her eyes moistened or sparkled as she spoke, or watched while Antonio interpreted. Most of the time her gaze was fastened upon me. It seemed as though she put me before Greaves, as though the incident of my having had charge of the boat which brought her off the island, had established me in her gratitude as her deliverer.

Her story, however, was little more than a repetition of what has already been related. Her mother had been absent twenty years from Old Spain. On the death of her husband, she sold the estate and all her interest in the business, and went to Acapulco with her daughter, on a visit to her brother, who was a priest at that place; thence she and Aurora took shipping for Cadiz.

The lady broke off at this to implore us, through Antonio, to tell her, as sailors, whether we believed her mother’s life had been preserved. Greaves answered that he considered it very probable that her mother was alive. Who was to tell that the ship had foundered? Who was to say that she had not outweathered the gale, been jury-rigged and worked by the survivors into port, the Señorita Aurora’s mother being on board?

The girl’s eyes glistened when this was translated. She smiled at Greaves and thanked him in Spanish. An expression of pleading then entered her face, and her look took a peculiar color of beauty from the wistfulness and plaintiveness of it. Why would not the captain set her ashore at Lima, that she might rejoin her mother, who, on landing—it mattered not at what port on the coast—was sure to make her way to Acapulco?

But Greaves shook his head, smiling into her eyes, which were impassioned with entreaty.

“I must go straight home,” said he. “Do not you know that there is a treasure in our hold, which obliges me to make haste to reach England? I will take care that you safely arrive at Madrid, even should it come to myself escorting you, señorita.”

She bowed, looking sadly.

“Or here,” said he, extending his hand toward me, “is a cavalier who will be honored by conducting you to Madrid.”

She slightly glanced at me, then fastened her eyes upon the deck and mused for a few moments; then addressed Antonio, who, turning to me, said—but in English, you will please understand, which I do not attempt to reproduce, that you may read without hindrance:

“The lady recollects that when she met you at Lima you spoke Spanish.”

“I was never at Lima,” I answered, coloring and then laughing.

“Depend upon it,” said Greaves, “that the fellow she met was good-looking, or recollection wouldn’t be so bright.”

“What was the occupation of the gentleman?” said I to the lady, through Antonio.

“He was an English naval officer, had been imprisoned, but had been at liberty some weeks when the señorita met him.”

“What was his name?”

“She does not remember; but you are the gentleman.”

“Be it so,” said I, laughing.

“On slenderer evidence have men been hanged,” said Greaves.

Now came a short pause. Antonio shuffled his naked feet, sometimes looking straight, sometimes squinting, impatient to get forward and lounge. The longboat had made her second trip, and lay alongside the beach. The figures of the men crawling from the grove of trees, trundling the casks among them, showed like beetles in the distance. It was about eleven o’clock. The sunlight was misty; the swell rolled with a dull flash in the brows of it; the wind hummed like clustering bees aloft, and swept the cheek as the breath and kiss of fever. The slewing of the brig, along with the sliding of the sun, pitched the glare upon the deck clear of the trysail, in whose shadow we had been conversing. I called to a man to spread the short awning. Antonio was going; the lady Aurora detained him.

“The señorita wants to know,” said the Spanish seaman, “how long the voyage to England occupies.”

“We mean to thrash our way home,” answered Greaves. “We shall not take long. Let us call it three months.”

“Blessed Virgin! Three months!” echoed the girl in Spanish.

A fine look of tragic horror enlarged her eyes. She distorted her mouth into a singular expression. The tension paled her lips and exposed her teeth.

Greaves seemed to admire her. For my part, I thought her now the most beautiful and wonderful creature I had ever heard of—a lady who might either be angel or devil, you could not tell which; or she might be both. Her face defied you, for it could put on twenty looks in the course of a short conversation, thanks to her heavy eyebrows, which were full of play and character, and thanks to the long lashes of her eyelids, whose drop or lift, whose languishing falls, and arch or scornful or playful erections, changed the meaning of her glances for her as she chose, rendering them, at her will, transparently eloquent or as inscrutable as a gypsy’s gaze. She put her hand upon her dress, and Antonio interpreted.

“The lady’s gown will not last three months, and then, señor?”

“Chaw!” cried Greaves, and, pointing with something of passion to the island, he exclaimed—“Ask the lady to put the clock back till the day before yesterday is reached, and then!”

On this being explained a flash of temper lighted up her eyes.

“I shall be in rags,” said she, “before you reach your country.”

“We have needles and thread on board,” said Greaves coolly.

“You are men, and cannot conceive what it is to be a woman embarking on a long voyage, possessed of no more clothes than what she has on.”

“How can we comfort her?” said I.

“Can the señorita sew?” said Greaves.

Certainly she could sew.

“Then,” said Greaves, “if the señorita can sew, let her mind be at rest. I am the owner of a roll of fine duck, which is entirely at her service. There are yards enough to yield her as many dresses as she needs. Will she require stuff for trimming? Let her select a flag of two or three colors. Bunting makes excellent trimming. It is light and brine-proof.”

Antonio bungled much, and squinted fiercely in the delivery of this; yet he contrived to make the lady faintly understand the meaning of Greaves’ speech. She tapped on her knee with her fingers, and seemed to keep time with the beat of her foot to an air that she inaudibly hummed; her black eyes were downward bent, but at swift intervals the fringes lifted, and a glance of light sparkled at me or Greaves. I noticed a pouting play of mouth. In fact, her air was that of a girl who has been spoiled by indulgence since her childhood. One figured her as the goddess of the fandango, the burden of the midnight guitar, and the heroine of a score of sweethearts.

“Duck is very well for dresses, sir,” said I. “She is thinking of under-linen.”

“We are not to know anything about under-linen,” said Greaves. “She must make what she wants. She doesn’t seem grateful enough to please me. To bother me about dress now, after four days of that cinder, and the deliverance recent enough to keep most people hysterically sobbing and thanking God in fervent ejaculations!”

Antonio addressed her. I guessed he wanted to know if he could go. She spoke to him, and the man, awkwardly smiling, said:

“The señorita asks if you are Catholics?”

“Yes and no, for my part,” answered Greaves, looking at her gravely, “I am heading that way. I believe I shall hoist the Papal flag yet, but it’s not flying at present.”

“Is the capitan a Catholic?” repeated the lady.

“Ay, but not a Papist,” said Greaves.

“Are you a Catholic, señor?”

“I love God and hate the devil,” said I. “That is my religion. It is broad, and there is room for many names upon its back.”

“Is it customary for ladies, do you know, Fielding, for ladies who have just been rescued from the horrors of a volcanic island, from perils hideously increased by the association of such a yellow and by no means fangless worm as that”—dropping his head in a cool nod at Antonio—“to inquire into the religious faiths of their preservers?”

The lady Aurora spoke.

“The señorita wishes to know when you changed your religion?”

“Ah, when, indeed?” said I, laughing.

“You were a very good Catholic at Lima, señor?”

“Yes, when I was at Lima, I was a very good Catholic?” said I.

“Then you are the caballero the señorita supposes?”

“Damn ye, you squinting devil, you know better!” thundered Greaves. “Jump forward. We’ve had enough of this.”

The man fled toward the forecastle, noiseless with naked feet. The lady looked frightened.

“Lima, señorita—no!” said I smiting my bosom with force.

She gazed at me earnestly with an expression of misgiving, then addressed me in Spanish. Greaves gathered her meaning.

“I believe she says you are not her man, if you are not a Catholic,” said he; and then pointing at me, and looking at her, he cried out, “No Catholic—no Lima—not your man, in any sense of the word. Fielding, what’s that Dutch devil Bol up to?”

I went to the side to look for the longboat. She was at that moment coming through the two points of reef. Her oars rose and fell in the distance in hairs of gold, and she seemed to tow a hair of gold in her wake as she came out of the calm breast of the harbor into the soundless heave of the ocean. I reported her approach and lay upon the rail watching her, and musing upon what had passed between the Spanish maid and us.

It was odd to think of a fine young woman, sitting on the deck of a vessel, that had but a few hours before taken her off the desolate island which was still in view, coolly inquiring into the religious beliefs of her preservers, and looking as though, if time had been given her, she would presently overhaul our consciences. To be sure, she hoped that if she found us Catholics, she would get more of her way with us, obtain pity, sympathy, enough to procure her direct conveyance to a near port. She left her chair, came close to my side, and stood looking at the boat; in a moment, pointing to it, she asked in Spanish for its name. I gave her the name, turning to look at Greaves, who was laughing softly, but with an averted face. She put more questions, pointing to the objects, and then lightly laying her fingers upon my arm, she signed that I should take her forward, glancing at Greaves as she did so, following the look on with a full stare at me, and a shake of the head eloquent as her speech. It was for all the world as though she had said in plain English, “I don’t like that man; let us leave this part of the ship.”

I made her understand as best I could, by pointing to the approaching boat, and then to the yardarm whip for slinging the casks aboard, that my duty obliged me to stop where I was. She bowed, but with a little flush, as though vexed by my refusal; indeed, in her whole instant manner, there was the irritation of your ladyship, of your exacting, well-served, much-admired, fine young madam, who is very little used to being disappointed.

I moved forward toward the gangway by two or three steps, that she might guess my work prohibited talk; and, in fact, conversation would have been impossible in a few minutes, for the longboat was fast nearing the brig, and the job of seeing the water aboard was mine; and that was not all, either. Greaves was captain; he was on deck, watching and listening. The influence of the presence of a captain is always strong upon the seaman, whether he be of the quarter-deck or of the forecastle. Habit worked like an instinct, and disquieted me. Had Greaves been below, I daresay I should have been very glad to keep the señorita at my side, if only for the enjoyment of meeting her full gaze; for the longer I looked at her eyes, the more did I wonder at their depth and life, at their transcendent powers of repulsion and solicitation, and eloquence of rapid expression; and the longer I listened to her voice, the more was I charmed by the sweetness and richness of it; and the longer I beheld her face, the more manifold grew its revelations. But its revelations of what? My pen has no art to answer that question. You gaze upon the face of the deep, and beauties steal out of it to your perception, and you know not how to define them, you know not how to indicate them. They come blending in an effect that enlarges as you look, and the sum of the steady revelation is a deepening delight and a constant growth of wonder. I hear you say, “Had a woman of Spain ever the beauty you claim or invent for this lady?” My answer is as simple as a look—I say “Yes.” The Señorita Aurora de la Cueva was a woman of Spain, and she had the beauty, and more than the beauty, I feebly attempt to describe. I care not if all the females of Old Spain are as hideous as hobgoblins and witches; they may all be bearded like the pard, thatched at the brow with horse hair, their complexions of chocolate, their figures bolsters; the lady Aurora was beautiful, her charms I have scarce language enough to hint at, much less portray. This she was, and whether you believe me or not signifies nothing.

And I did not much admire the woman when I first saw her! thought I. In fact, had I rowed her aboard another ship and never seen her again, I should never have thought of her again. Is it to end in my making a fool of myself? Does a man make a fool of himself when he falls in love? A plague upon these cheap cynic phrases which creep into the national speech, and form the mirth of boys and the wisdom of the sucklings of literature. But I am not in love yet, anyhow, thought I.

“Oars!” roared Bol, in the stern sheets of the boat. “Standt by mit der boathook. Vy der doyfil doan somebody gif us der end of a rope?”

A rope was flung. My lady Aurora walked forward, calling and beckoning to Antonio. She arrived abreast of the galley and stood there, and talked to the Spaniard, pointing about her and clearly asking for the name of things in English.

“Fielding,” cried Greaves.

“Sir,” I answered, facing about.

“She will be making love to you in your own tongue before another week is out,” he called.

“Such a voice as hers would keep anything not deaf listening as long as she liked.”

“She has a very sweet voice,” he exclaimed, “and she is a very fine woman. But should she pick up our tongue, you’ll find the devil that’s inside of her come drifting out horns first with the earliest of her speech. Talk of your fears of the crew! She’s the sort of party to carry a ship single-handed, though the vessel mounted the guns and was manned by the complement of the Royal Sovereign. She is learning English for some piratic motive—it may be the dollars, it may be the brig—for she don’t want to go, and I dare say she don’t mean to go round the Horn without her mother. Bol, is this the last load?”

“Der last loadt, sir.”

“Bear a hand then to whip the water aboard, and let us get away.”

It was a quarter before one by the time we had chocked and secured the longboat and were ready to start on a passage that was to carry us over many thousands of miles of salt water. The breeze had freshened; soft small clouds, like shadings in pencil, were sailing up off the edge of the sea into the misty blue overhead; the luster of the sun was still pale and brassy, and a look of wind was in the yellow of the disk-shaped spread of radiance, out of which he looked like an eye of fire in a target of gold.

“Make sail, Fielding,” called Greaves, from his chair, on which he had been sitting ever since he came on deck, though in all those hours he had not once complained of pain. “Make sail and heap it on her. Bring her head due south, and let her go.”

The braces of the yards of the main were manned, the wheel turned, the canvas filled as the fiery breath, that was now brushing the sea, and that seemed to come the hotter for the very dimness of the sunshine, gushed over the quarter. We squared away to it; and now the island slided by, opening features of its swart, melancholy, loathly rocks, which had been invisible before. The milk-white burst of surge made the base of the cliff in the wash of it black. I noticed a hovering of pale radiance upon the patch of verdure where the grove or wood stood. It was no more than a patch to our distant eye; it was like the dance of the South African silver tree. The verdure had the gleam of an emerald, and you thought of a gem on the sallow breast of death.

I was full of the business of making sail, yet could find an eye for the island as it veered away on the quarter. Greaves gazed at it intently, so did the lady Aurora as she stood at the rail, with her profile cut clear and keen as a marble bust against the sky over the horizon. The mouth of the cave yawned upon us, then narrowed, then thinned into a slice, then vanished round a shoulder of cliff.

“Pull, you toyfils! Shoomp und run!” bawled Bol, in his hurricane note, to the two Spaniards, who were loafing near the galley, lazily looking on at the work that was going forward. “Dis vhas not der islandt—dis vhas no shipwreck. Shoomp, or I make you fly mit a sharge of goonpowder in der slack of yer breeks.”

The royals were sheeted home; trysail, flying jib, staysails set; for it was a quartering wind, and there was scarce a cloth that we could throw abroad but could do serviceable work. They called this sort of sailing in our time going along all fluking, the weather-clew of the mainsail up and the lee-clew dully lifting its weight of blocks and hawser-like sheets and thick frame of foot and bolt-rope.

“Set all stu’n’-sails,” cried Greaves; and soon out to windward soared to their several yardarms and to their boom-ends those wide, overhanging spaces of sail, clothing the brig in surf-white cloths from the royal mast heads to the very heave of the brine, when she rolled her swinging-boom to windward.

“Pipe to dinner!” called Greaves.

The sweet, clear strains of Yan Bol’s whistle found a hundred echoes in the hollows on high. Aurora gazed upward, as though looking for the birds. The men had worked hard, and were pale with heat and sweat. They had worked with a will in making sail. Even the Dutchmen had sprang along and aloft with a bluejacket’s activity; for we were homeward bound! a cry in every marine heart magical in its inspiration of swift and eager labor. With dripping brows the men stood looking at the receding island, while Yan Bol whistled them to dinner; and when the burly Dutch boatswain let fall the pipe upon his breast to the length of its laniard, all hands, moved by feelings which made every throat one for the moment, roared out a long, wild cheer of farewell to the island, flourishing caps and arms to it, as though its heights were crowded with friends who could see and hear them.

“Look at Galloon!” cried Greaves.

The dog was on the taffrail, and every bark he sent at the island was like a loud hurrah, with the significance the noise took from the wagging of the creature’s tail and the set of the whole figure of him.

“He knows we are homeward bound,” said Greaves.

“And that the dollars are aboard,” said I.

Miss Aurora went to the dog, caressed, and talked to him. The lad Jimmy’s head showed at the galley door. Greaves hailed him to know when dinner would be ready.

“Another twenty minutes, master.”

“Heave the log, Fielding, and let’s get the pace at the start.”

All expression of pain was now passed out of his face; likewise had his natural, fresh color returned to him. The triumph of this time had kindled his eyes anew, and there were pride and content in the looks which he cast around his brig and over the rail at the island. And I think if ever there was a man who had a right to feel satisfied with himself and his work, Greaves, at this time, was he; for, truly, something more than talent had gone to the discovery of the dollars in the caverned ship. Mere accident it was that had disclosed the vessel, but it needed the genius of a great adventurer to light upon the dollars, to note all the particulars of the Spanish manifest, to hold the secret behind his teeth till he got home, to inspire such an old hunks as Bartholomew Tulp with confidence enough to shed his blood, or, in other words, to disburse his money, in the furtherance of this enterprise of recovery.

I called a couple of men aft and hove the log. What is the log? It is a reel round which are wound many fathoms of line; at the end of the line is attached a piece of wood, sometimes a canvas bag, designed to grip the water when it is hove overboard. The line is spaced into knots, and the running of it is timed by a glass of sand. This log is one of the oldest contrivances we have at sea. With it the early navigators groped their way about the world. It found them New Holland and the Indies, and both Americas. It was their longitude and often their latitude. It was their chronometer and sextant. We use it still, and cannot better it. A simple and noble old contrivance is the log. May the mariner never lose faith in it! Crutched by the log on one side, and the lead on the other, he may hobble round the globe in safety, defiant of shoals, regardless of fogs.

I hove the log, and made the speed seven knots.

“A good start!” exclaimed Greaves, rising and coming slowly to the rail, and looking over. He walked without inconvenience or pain, and stood with a thoughtful face, gazing at the satin-white sheets of foam sliding past. Madam Aurora left Galloon and came to my side, but Galloon followed her—never went there to sea a friendlier, a more affectionate dog. The men were hauling in the dripping log line and reeling it up. The lady with a smile said with a very good accent, “How do you call it?” I laughed as I pronounced the word log. Oh, what should it convey to the imagination of a Spanish maiden?

She understood, however, for what purpose it had been used, and with eloquent gestures inquired the speed. I held up my fingers.

“Quien lo hubiera creído?” cried she.

“She is not grumbling, I hope,” called Greaves from the rail, and he slowly approached us.

The lady looked for a little while very earnestly at the captain, with a world of meaning in her beautiful eyes—meaning so eloquent in desire of expression, that it was pathetic to witness the arrest of speech in her gaze and face. She then with grace and dignity motioned round the sea.

“It is very wide, and the voyage before us is a long one—I understand that,” interpreted Greaves; and never did man peruse lineaments more speaking or translate glances more radiant and expressive.

She then placed the forefinger of her right hand upon her lips to signify silence or dumbness.

“Which means,” said Greaves, “that you can’t speak our tongue, and don’t like the prospect, accordingly.”

She then took her dress in her hand, putting on a most mournful countenance.

“Yaw, yaw,” cried Greaves, with a little irritation, “we have discussed that matter, madam. But there is white duck below—duck for the duck, what d’ye say, Fielding? and there are hussifs in the fok’sle.”

I believed that her dumb show was at an end. Not at all. Clasping her hands sparkling with the several rings she wore, and raising them in a posture of supplication to the level of her mouth, she upturned her face to the sky, and with an inimitable expression of entreaty, of piteous prayer rather, insomuch that her eyes seemed to swim and her lips to work, she stood while you could have counted ten.

“Sainted and purest of all the Marias, put pity into the heart of this British captain, and cause him to set me ashore, for the sea is wide and the voyage is long; and I am possessed by a dumb devil and cast among heretics; and I have but one gown; and, O Maria and ye saints! candles shall ye have in plenty, mortification will I undergo, prayers by the fathom will I recite, choice gifts will I make to Holy Mother Church, if ye will but soften the heart of the durned, slab-sided skipper who stands opposite me, interpreting my mind. There ye have it, Fielding. That’s what her gestures said, that’s what her eyes looked. But I tell you what—this sort of thing will grow tiresome presently. You must bear a hand and teach her to speak English.”

“Dinner’s on the table, master,” said Jimmy, putting his head through the companion way.

“Call Yan Bol aft to stand a lookout while we dine, Fielding,” said Greaves, “and give your arm to the lady and bring her below. She don’t like me.”