some one tugging
at his coat, and he looked down.

There was Inez demanding his attention.

"Take me up, pop," said she.

"Bless your heart!" laughed the captain as he obeyed the little
empress; "you would ruin the discipline of a man-of-war in a month."

While speaking, he perched her on his shoulder, as was a favorite
custom with him.

The day had been unusually warm, and the night was so mild that the
steady breeze made by the motion of the steamer was scarcely
sufficient to keep one cool. Little Inez had thrown aside her hat with
the setting of the sun, and now her wealth of golden hair streamed and
fluttered in fleecy masses about her shoulders.

The steamer was plowing straight to the westward, cutting the waves so
keenly that a thin parabola of water continually curved over in front
of her from the knife-like prow.

Perched aloft on the shoulder of the captain, Inez naturally gazed
ahead, and the figure was a striking one of innocence and infancy
peering forward through the mists and clouds toward the unknown
future. But Inez was too young to have any such poetical thoughts,
and the captain was too practical to be troubled by "aesthetic
meditations."

He chatted with her about their arrival in Japan, saying that she
would be glad to see no more of him, when she replied:

"If you talk that way, I'll cry. You must go home and live with us.
Uncle Con says papa has a big dog, and if we haven't room in the
house, you can sleep with him, and I'll feed you each morning--oh,
look!"

CHAPTER III

AN ACCIDENT

That which arrested the attention of the little girl in the arms of
Captain Strathmore, was a sight--unique, rare and impressively
beautiful.

All around the steamer stretched the vast Pacific, melting away into
darkness, with here and there a star-like twinkle, showing where some
ship was moving over the waste of waters. Overhead, the sky was clear,
with a few stars faintly gleaming, while the round, full moon, for
whose rising so many on the steamer had been watching, had just come
up, its disk looking unusually large, as it always does when so close
to the horizon.

Just when the moon was half above the ocean, and when the narrowing
path of the illumination stretched from the ship to the outer edge of
the world, a vessel under full sail slowly passed over the face of the
moon.

The partial eclipse was so singular that it arrested the attention of
Inez, who uttered the exclamation we