he 'll fall
asleep, and forget everything."

Cashel shook his head doubtfully, but determined to try the plan at all
hazards.

"Would my Lord be persuaded to lie down, do you think?" said Roland,
approaching Lady Kilgoff, who, enveloped in the folds of the heavy
boat-cloak, sat calm and collected near the wheel.

"Is there danger?" asked she, hurriedly.

"Not the least; but he seems so ill, and every sea rushes-over him as he
stands."

"You should go down, my dear Lord," said she, addressing him; "Mr.
Cashel is afraid you 'll catch cold here?"

"Ah, is he indeed?" said Lord Kilgoff, in a snappish asperity. "He is
too good to bestow a thought upon me."

"I am only anxious, my Lord, that you should n't suffer from your
complaisance so unhappily rewarded."

"Very kind, exceedingly kind, sir. It is, as you say, most unhappy--a
perfect storm, a hurricane. Gracious mercy! what's that?"

This exclamation was caused by a loud smash, like the report of a
cannon-shot, and at the same moment the taper topmast fell crashing
down, with all its cordage clattering round it. The confusion of the
accident, the shouting of voices, the thundering splash of the sea, as,
the peak having fallen, the craft had lost the steadying influence of
the mainsail, all seemed to threaten immediate danger. Cashel was about
to spring forward and assist in cutting away the entangled rigging, when
he felt his hand firmly grasped by another, whose taper fingers left no
doubt to whom it belonged.

"Don't be alarmed--it is nothing," whispered he encouragingly; "the
mishap is repaired in a second."

"You 'll not leave me," said she, in a low tone, which thrilled through
every fibre of his heart. He pressed her hand more closely, and tried,
but in vain, to catch a glimpse at her face.

Meanwhile the disordered rigging had been repaired, and two men under
Sickleton's direction, lifting the drooping and scarce conscious peer
from the deck, carried him down below.

If the old instincts of Roland Cashel's sailor life would have rendered
the scene interesting to him, watching as he did the way his craft
"behaved," and marking well the fine qualities she possessed as a
sea-boat, there was another and far more intense feeling then occupying
him as he stood close beside that swathed and muffled figure, who, pale
and silent, marked by some gesture, from time to time, her dependence
upon him. To Roland, the rattle of the gale, the hissing sea, the
stra