nd was still like my own sex to
look at. All _that_ is changed since; but I _was_ comely _then_."

"_Why_ did Capt. Spike abandon you, Jack; you have never told me
_that_."

"Because he fancied another. And ever since that time he has been
fancying others, instead of remembering me. Had he got _you_, Miss
Rose, I think he would have been content for the rest of his days."

"Be certain, Jack, I should never have consented to marry Capt.
Spike."

"You're well out of his hands," answered Jack, sighing heavily, which
was much the most feminine thing she had done during the whole
conversation, "well out of his hands--and God be praised it is so. He
should have died, before I would let him carry you off the
island--husband or no husband."

"It might have exceeded your power to prevent it under other
circumstances, Jack."

Rose now continued looking out of the window in silence. Her thoughts
reverted to her aunt and Biddy, and tears rolled down her cheeks as
she remembered the love of one, and the fidelity of the other. Their
horrible fate had given her a shock that, at first, menaced her with a
severe fit of illness; but her strong, good sense, and excellent
constitution, both sustained by her piety and Harry's manly
tenderness, had brought her through the danger, and left her, as the
reader now sees her, struggling with her own griefs, in order to be of
use to the still more unhappy woman who had so singularly become her
friend and companion.

The reader will readily have anticipated that Jack Tier had early made
the females on board the Swash her confidents. Rose had known the
outlines of her history from the first few days they were at sea
together, which is the explanation of the visible intimacy that had
caused Mulford so much surprise. Jack's motive in making his
revelations might possibly have been tinctured with jealousy, but a
desire to save one as young and innocent as Rose was at its bottom.
Few persons but a wife would have supposed our heroine could have been
in any danger from a lover like Spike; but Jack saw him with the eyes
of her own youth, and of past recollections, rather than with those of
truth. A movement of the wounded man first drew Rose from the window.
Drying her eyes hastily, she turned toward him, fancying that she
might prove the better nurse of the two, notwithstanding Jack's
greater interest in the patient.

"What place is this--and why am I here?" demanded Spike, with more
strength