a par with all the rest, and the cook could be heard
beating the dried fish with the back of an axe to make it tender. Salve
seemed to have dropped all at once into home life and ways again.

The crew were dressed in thick winter clothing, and had the appearance
of navvies rather than of sailors, but they were all fearless,
hardy-looking fellows, as most of the men who risk their lives on these
timber vessels are; and what immediately struck him with a feeling of
pleasure, was the honest expression which every countenance, without
exception, wore. It was long since he had seen a sight of the kind, and
he felt ashamed of himself for going about with his knife ready to hand,
as had been his custom for so many years, and put it away in his chest
the very first day. He took a pleasure in leaving his watch and money
out on the top where they might easily have been taken, and was filled
with surprise and admiration when he found that they were not stirred.

He had not been able to get out of his head the idea that Elizabeth was
now in Amsterdam, in spite of the almost certain feeling which he had
that she had been long ago married to young Beck. His thoughts kept
returning to, and dwelling upon, this subject, and he began to sound the
skipper as to whether the trade with Holland was a paying one, and to
post himself up generally in all particulars. Their conversation was
carried on in a kind of jumble of English chiefly, and he gathered, at
all events, that it was a lucrative business, and an occupation which
seemed likely to suit him in every way. It was adventurous, and that was
a recommendation; and a way of living at home in which he would be under
nobody's orders but his own, fell in exactly with his nature. He had
more than money enough to purchase some old craft or other, and--in
fact, it was decided; he would be the owner of a timber ship, and ply to
Holland.

He began now to look out more impatiently than ever for land, and longed
so to catch the first streak of the Norwegian coast above the horizon,
as if it was something he hardly dared hope that he should live to see.
He paced up and down for hours together, anathematising through his
teeth the old tub with her slack sails and rolling motion--they seemed
to be drifting, not sailing; and from the restlessness and impatience he
exhibited, it began to be whispered among the crew that the Englishman
must have a screw loose somewhere. When the dim outline of Lindesna