shipping."

"Not in this age of steam, I think," observed a tall, thin man mildly.

"In this age of steam, sir," responded the captain. "You may not
credit it, but on three occasions I have measured the two Atlantics
from abreast of Ushant to abreast of the Cape of Good Hope without
sighting a single ship, steam or sail."

"You amaze me," said the mild, thin man.

"How far are we from Penzance, captain?" I inquired.

"Why," he answered, "all a hundred and fifty miles."

"If that be so then," I cried, "our drift must have been that of a
balloon."

"Will those poor creatures ever be able to reach the English coast in
that broken boat?" exclaimed one of the ladies, indicating the
_Spitfire_ that now lay dwarfed right over the stern of the ship.

"If they are longshoremen--and yet I don't know," exclaimed the captain
with a short laugh, "a boatman will easily handle a craft of that sort
when a blue-water sailor would be all abroad." He put his hand into
the skylight and lifted a telescope off its brackets, and applied it to
his eye. "Still pumping," said he, talking whilst he gazed through the
glass, "and they're stretching a sail along--bending it no doubt.
There's plenty of mast there for cloths enough to blow them home. The
pump keeps the water under--that's certain. To my mind she looks more
buoyant than she was. Ladies and gentlemen, she'll do--she'll do. If
I thought not--" he viewed her for a little while in silence. "Oh,
yes, ladies and gentlemen, she'll do," he repeated, and then replacing
the glass, exclaimed to me, "Have you lunched, Mr. Barclay?"

"No, captain, I have not, neither can I say I have breakfasted."

"Oh, confound it, man, you should have said so before. Step this way,
sir, step this way," and he led me to the companion hatch that
conducted to the saloon, pausing on the road, however, to beckon with a
square forefinger to a sober, Scotch-faced personage in a monkey jacket
and loose pilot trousers--the chief mate as I afterwards learnt--to
whom in a wheezy undertone he addressed some instructions, which, as I
gathered from one or two syllables I overheard, referred to the
speaking of inward-bound ships, and to our trans-shipment.

The saloon was a fine, long, handsome interior, but I preserve no more
of it than a general impression of mirrors, rich panels, a short row of
lamps formed of some lustrous metal, an elaborate stove aft, a piano
secured to the richly-decorated shaft of