g
earnestly into the face of every woman in the ship.

So eager was the poor man about it that he forgot to offer the last
armful of Testaments which he had undertaken to distribute, and simply
went from berth to berth staring at the females. He would undoubtedly
have been considered mad if it had not been that the women were too much
taken up with their own affairs, to think much about any one with whom
they had nothing to do.

One distracting, and also disheartening, part of the process was, that,
owing to the general activity on board, he came again and again to the
same faces in different parts of the vessel, but he so frequently missed
seeing others that hope was kept alive by the constant turning up of new
faces. Alas! none of them bore any resemblance to that for which he
sought so earnestly!

At last he returned to the place where his friend was preaching. By
that time, however, the crowd was so great that he could not enter.
Turning aside, therefore, into an open berth, with a feeling of
weariness and depression creeping over his mind and body, he was about
to sit down on a box, when a female voice at the other end of the berth
demanded to know what he wanted.

Hope was a powerful element in Captain Bream's nature. He rose quickly
and stopped to gaze attentively into a female face, but it was so dark
where she sat on a low box that he could hardly see her, and took a step
forward.

"Well, Mr Imprence, I hope as you'll know me again," said the woman,
whose face was fiery red, and whose nature was furious. "What _do_ you
want here?"

The captain sighed profoundly. _That_ was obviously not his sister!
Then a confused feeling of incapacity to give a good reason for being
there came over him. Suddenly he recollected the Testaments.

"Have one?" he said eagerly, as he offered one of the little black
books.

"Have what?"

"A Testament."

"No, I won't have a Testament, I'm a Catholic," said the woman as she
looked sternly up.

Captain Bream was considering how he might best suggest that the Word of
God was addressed to all mankind, when a thought seemed to strike the
woman.

"Are you the cap'n?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied absently, and with some degree of truth.

"Then it's my opinion, cap'n, an' I tell it you to your face, that you
ought to be ashamed of yourself to put honest men an' wimen in places
like this--neither light, nor hair, nor nothink in the way of hornament
to--"

"Captai