a burst of wintry sun between two squalls of hail, I had my
first look of Holland--a line of windmills birling in the breeze. It was
besides my first knowledge of these daft-like contrivances, which gave
me a near sense of foreign travel and a new world and life. We came to
an anchor about half-past eleven, outside the harbour of Helvoetsluys,
in a place where the sea sometimes broke and the ship pitched
outrageously. You may be sure we were all on deck, save Mrs. Gebbie,
some of us in cloaks, others mantled in the ship's tarpaulins, all
clinging on by ropes, and jesting the most like old sailor-folk that we
could imitate.

Presently a boat, that was backed like a partan-crab, came gingerly
alongside, and the skipper of it hailed our master in the Dutch. Thence
Captain Sang turned, very troubled-like, to Catriona; and, the rest of
us crowding about, the nature of the difficulty was made plain to all.
The _Rose_ was bound to the port of Rotterdam, whither the other
passengers were in a great impatience to arrive, in view of a conveyance
due to leave that very evening in the direction of the Upper Germany.
This, with the present half-gale of wind, the captain (if no time were
lost) declared himself still capable to save. Now James More had trysted
in Helvoet with his daughter, and the captain had engaged to call
before the port and place her (according to the custom) in a shore boat.
There was the boat, to be sure, and here was Catriona ready: but both
our master and the patroon of the boat scrupled at the risk, and the
first was in no humour to delay.

"Your father," said he, "would be geyan little pleased if we was to
break a leg to ye, Miss Drummond, let-a-be drowning of you. Take my way
of it," says he, "and come on-by with the rest of us here to Rotterdam.
Ye can get a passage down the Maes in a sailing scoot as far as to the
Brill, and thence on again, by a place in a rattel-waggon, back to
Helvoet."

But Catriona would hear of no change. She looked white-like as she
beheld the bursting of the sprays, the green seas that sometimes poured
upon the forecastle, and the perpetual bounding and swooping of the boat
among the billows; but she stood firmly by her father's orders. "My
father, James More, will have arranged it so," was her first word and
her last. I thought it very idle, and indeed wanton, in the girl to be
so literal and stand opposite to so much kind advice; but the fact is
she had a very good reason, if