l floating over her mizzen mast, lay
Martin's ship.

She was a wooden schooner, once a Dundee whaler called the _Mary_ but
now re-christened the _Scotia_, and it would be silly to say how my eyes
filled at sight of her, just because she had taken Martin down into the
deep Antarctic and brought him safely back again.

"She's a beauty, isn't she?" said Martin.

"Isn't she?" I answered, and in spite of all my troubles I felt entirely
happy.

We had steamed down against a strong tide, so we were half an hour late
for luncheon, and the officers had gone down to the saloon, but it was
worth being a little after time to see the way they all leapt up and
received me like a queen--making me feel, as I never felt before, the
difference between the politeness of the fashionable idlers and the
manners of the men who do things.

"Holloa!" they cried.

"Excuse us, won't you? We thought something had happened and perhaps you
were not coming," said the commander, and then he put me to sit between
himself and Martin.

The strange thing was that I was at home in that company in a moment,
and if anybody imagines that I must have been embarrassed because I was
the only member of my sex among so many men he does not know the heart
of a woman.

They were such big, bronzed manly fellows with the note of health and
the sense of space about them--large space--as if they had come out of
the heroic youth of the world, that they set my blood a-tingling to look
at them.

They were very nice to me too, though I knew that I only stood for the
womankind that each had got at home and was soon to go back to, but none
the less it was delightful to feel as if I were taking the first fruits
of their love for them.

So it came to pass that within a few minutes I, who had been called
insipid and was supposed to have no conversation, was chattering away
softly and happily, making remarks about the things around me and asking
all sorts of questions.

Of course I asked many foolish ones, which made the men laugh very much;
but their laughter did not hurt me the least bit in the world, because
everybody laughed on that ship, even the sailors who served the dishes,
and especially one grizzly old salt, a cockney from Wapping, who for
some unexplained reason was called Treacle.

It made me happy to see how they all deferred to Martin, saying: "Isn't
that so, Doctor?" or "Don't you agree, Doctor?" and though it was
strange and new to hear Martin (my