of her tall husband, who thrashed her
soundly when she got drunk. Moreover, she was very jealous of all the
young women in the ship, whom she termed, "Lazy, bold, gude for nought
hizzies, who wud na led a' bodies ain man alane."

She would sit for hours on the deck smoking a short black pipe, and
crooning old border ballads, in a voice anything but musical.

During Flora's long morning promenade upon deck, she more than once
caught a pair of yellow, queer-looking eyes peering at her from beneath
the shade of one of the boats which were slung to the main-mast, and
by-and-by a singularly disagreeable-looking head raised itself from a
couch of cloaks, and continued its investigation in a very intrusive
manner. The head belonged to a little man in a snuff-coloured suit,
whose small, pert, pugnacious face, eyes, hair and complexion, were only
a variety of the same shades as the dress in which he had cased his
outer man. Flora quietly pointed him out to her husband, and asked in a
whisper, "What he thought of the little brown man?"

"His appearance is not at all prepossessing," said Lyndsay. "I will ask
the Captain, who is coming this way, who and what he is?"

The question seemed to embarrass old Boreas not a little. He threw a
frowning glance towards the spot occupied by the stranger, shrugged his
shoulders, whistled a tune, and thrusting his hands into his breeches'
pockets, took several turns on the deck before he made any reply. Until,
seeing the snuff-coloured individual about to crawl out of his
hiding-place, he called out in a gruff voice--

"Keep where you are, Sir--the longer you remain out of sight the better.
By exposing yourself to observation, you may cause trouble to more
persons than _one_!"

The person thus unceremoniously addressed, smiled malignantly, and
retreating beneath the shade of the boat, snarled out some reply, only
audible to the captain; whose advice did not however seem lost upon him,
for after the Lyndsays had taken another turn or two, and he had glared
at them with his little fiery eyes, sufficiently to gratify his insolent
curiosity, he again emerged from under the boat, and succeeded in
tumbling into it. Drawing a part of a spare sail over his diminutive
person, he vanished as completely from sight, as if the ocean had
suddenly swallowed him up.

"I was a d----d fool!" muttered the captain, returning to Lyndsay's
side, "to let that fellow, with his ugly, sneering phiz, come on board