were owing to terror
only, and when she found the little craft buoyant and our lives in no
danger, her spirits would rise and her strength return.

But what an elopement is this! thought I, as I gazed upon her sweet,
white face and closed lids darkening the cheek with the shadowing of
the fringes. One reads of fugitive lovers in peril from overset stage
coaches, from detectives in waiting at railway stations, from
explosions, earthquakes and collisions on land and ocean. But a gale
of wind--a storm-dismantled dandy yacht of twenty-six tons furiously
working in the thick of a wild Channel sea, where the surge swells
large with the weight of the near Atlantic--here are conditions of a
runaway match, the like of which are not to be found, I believe,
outside of my own experience.

The blessed daylight came at last. I spied the weak wet grey of it in
a corner of the skylight that had been left uncovered by the tarpaulin
which was spread over the glass. I looked closely at Grace and found
her asleep. I could not be sure at first, so motionless had she been
lying, but when I put my ear close to her mouth, the regularity of her
respiration convinced me that she was slumbering.

That she should be able to snatch even ten minutes of sleep cheered me.
Yet my spirits were very heavy, every bone in me ached with a pain as
of rheumatism; though I did not feel sick, my brain seemed to reel, and
the sensation of giddiness was hardly less miserable and depressing
than nausea itself. I stood up, and with great difficulty caught the
brandy as it flew from side to side on the swinging tray, and took a
dram, and then clawed my way as before to the companion steps, and
opening the cover, got into the hatch and stood looking at the picture
of my yacht and the sea.

There was no one at the helm; the tiller was lashed to leeward. The
shock I received on observing no one aft, finding the helm abandoned,
as it seemed to me, I shall never forget. The tiller was the first
object I saw as I rose through the hatch, and my instant belief was
that all my people had been swept overboard. On looking forward,
however, I spied Caudel and the others of the men at work about the
mast. I am no sailor and cannot tell you what they were doing, beyond
saying that they were securing the mast by affixing tackles and so
forth to it. But I had no eyes for them or their work; I could only
gaze at my ruined yacht, which at every heave appeared to be pu