e conviction that she had measured him
by a higher standard than any he had known, and found him wanting. So
he would go to her school, and learn what she knew.

With lightning-like rapidity his mind rehearsed the details of his
tuition: the four long voyages; the brutality of the officers until he
had learned his work; their consideration and rough kindness when he
had become useful and valuable; the curious, incongruous feeling of
self-respect that none but able seamen feel; the growth in him of an
aggressive physical courage; the triumphant satisfaction with which he
finally knew himself as a complete man, clean in morals and mind, able
to look men in the face. And then came the moment when, mustering at
the capstan with the new crew of her father's ship, he had met her
surprised eyes with a steady glance, and received no recognition.

And so he pleaded his cause, dumbly, by the life that he lived. Asking
nothing by word or look, he proved himself under her eyes--first on
deck; first in the rigging; the best man at a weather-earing; the best
at the wheel; quick, obedient, intelligent, and respectful, winning the
admiration of his mates, the jealous ill will of the officers, but no
sign of interest or approval from her until to-night--the ninety-second
day of the passage. She had surrendered; he had reached her level, only
to die; and he thought this strange.

Facing downward, head inboard now, and nearly horizontal, he was
passing the cross-jack yard. Below him was the sea--black and crisp,
motionless as though carved in ebony. Neither was there movement of the
ship and its rigging; the hanging bights of ropes were rigid, while a
breaking sea just abaft the main chains remained poised, curled, its
white crest a frozen pillow of foam. "The rapidity of thought," he
mused dreamily; "but I'm falling fast enough--fast enough to kill me
when I strike."

He could not move an eyelid now, nor was he conscious that he breathed;
but, being nearly upright, facing aft and inboard, the quarter-deck and
its fittings were before his eyes, and he saw what brought him out of
eternity to a moment of finite time and emotion. The helmsman stood at
the motionless wheel with his right hand poised six inches above a
spoke, as though some sudden paralysis gripped him, and his face,
illumined by the binnacle light, turned aloft inquiringly. But it was
not this. Standing at the taffrail, one hand on a life-buoy, was a girl
in yellow lookin