steer night and day and
for ever. So I shall expect, after breakfast, to receive my first
lesson. And then you shall lie down and sleep. We'll stand watches just
as they do on ships."

"I don't see how I am to teach you," I made protest. "I am just learning
for myself. You little thought when you trusted yourself to me that I
had had no experience whatever with small boats. This is the first time
I have ever been in one."

"Then we'll learn together, sir. And since you've had a night's start
you shall teach me what you have learned. And now, breakfast. My! this
air does give one an appetite!"

"No coffee," I said regretfully, passing her buttered sea-biscuits and a
slice of canned tongue. "And there will be no tea, no soups, nothing
hot, till we have made land somewhere, somehow."

After the simple breakfast, capped with a cup of cold water, Maud took
her lesson in steering. In teaching her I learned quite a deal myself,
though I was applying the knowledge already acquired by sailing the
_Ghost_ and by watching the boat-steerers sail the small boats. She was
an apt pupil, and soon learned to keep the course, to luff in the puffs
and to cast off the sheet in an emergency.

Having grown tired, apparently, of the task, she relinquished the oar to
me. I had folded up the blankets, but she now proceeded to spread them
out on the bottom. When all was arranged snugly, she said:

"Now, sir, to bed. And you shall sleep until luncheon. Till
dinner-time," she corrected, remembering the arrangement on the _Ghost_.

What could I do? She insisted, and said, "Please, please," whereupon I
turned the oar over to her and obeyed. I experienced a positive sensuous
delight as I crawled into the bed she had made with her hands. The calm
and control which were so much a part of her seemed to have been
communicated to the blankets, so that I was aware of a soft dreaminess
and content, and of an oval face and brown eyes framed in a fisherman's
cap and tossing against a background now of grey cloud, now of grey sea,
and then I was aware that I had been asleep.

I looked at my watch. It was one o'clock. I had slept seven hours! And
she had been steering seven hours! When I took the steering-oar I had
first to unbend her cramped fingers. Her modicum of strength had been
exhausted, and she was unable even to move from her position. I was
compelled to let go the sheet while I helped her to the nest of blankets
and