or read, or even to organise an impromptu concert? There is a capital
piano abaft there; and I am sure that among so distinguished a company
there must be plenty of good musicians."

And so indeed it proved; for when, having finished our smoke, the
general and some half a dozen more of us returned to the cuddy, we found
that several of the younger ladies of the party had already produced
their music, and were doing their best to make the evening pass
pleasantly for themselves and others. Miss Onslow was one of the
exceptions; she had not produced any music, nor, apparently, did she
intend to take anything more than a passive part in the entertainment;
indeed it is going almost too far to say even so much as that, for it
appeared doubtful whether she even condescended so far as to regard
herself as one of the audience; she had provided herself with a book,
and had curled herself up comfortably in the corner most distant from
the piano, and was reading with an air of absorption and interest so
pronounced as really to be almost offensive to the performers. In
almost anyone else the manifestation of so profound an indifference to
the efforts of others to please would have been regarded as an
indication of ill-breeding; but in her case--well, she was so regally
and entrancingly lovely that somehow one felt as though her beauty
justified everything, and that it was an act of condescension and a
favour that she graced the cuddy with her presence at all. And indeed I
was very much disposed to think that this was her own view of the
matter. Be that as it may, we all spent an exceedingly pleasant
evening; and when I turned into my bunk that night I felt very well
satisfied with the prospects of the voyage before me.

CHAPTER TWO.

AT SEA--A WRECK IN SIGHT.

I was awakened at six o'clock the next morning by the men chorussing at
the windlass, and the quick clank of the pawls that showed how
thoroughly Jack was putting his heart into his work, and how quickly he
was walking the ship up to her anchor. I scrambled out of my bunk, and
took a peep through the port in the ship's side, to see what the weather
was like; it was scarcely daylight yet; the glass of the port was
blurred with the quick splashing of rain, and the sky was simply a blot
of scurrying, dirty grey vapour. I made a quick mental reference to the
condition of the tide, deducting therefrom the direction of the ship's
head, and thus arrived at the fact tha