chafed her hands and arms.

"I am so tired," she said, with a quick intake of the breath and a sigh,
drooping her head wearily.

But she straightened it the next moment. "Now don't scold, don't you
dare scold," she cried with mock defiance.

"I hope my face does not appear angry," I answered seriously; "for I
assure you I am not in the least angry."

"N-no," she considered. "It looks only reproachful."

"Then it is an honest face, for it looks what I feel. You were not fair
to yourself, nor to me. How can I ever trust you again?"

She looked penitent. "I'll be good," she said, as a naughty child might
say it. "I promise--"

"To obey as a sailor would obey his captain?"

"Yes," she answered. "It was stupid of me, I know."

"Then you must promise something else," I ventured.

"Readily."

"That you will not say, 'Please, please,' too often; for when you do you
are sure to override my authority."

She laughed with amused appreciation. She, too, had noticed the power of
the repeated "please."

"It is a good word--" I began.

"But I must not overwork it," she broke in.

But she laughed weakly, and her head drooped again. I left the oar long
enough to tuck the blankets about her feet and to pull a single fold
across her face. Alas! she was not strong. I looked with misgiving
toward the south-west and thought of the six hundred miles of hardship
before us--ay, if it were no worse than hardship. On this sea a storm
might blow up at any moment and destroy us. And yet I was unafraid. I
was without confidence in the future, extremely doubtful, and yet I felt
no underlying fear. It must come right, it must come right, I repeated
to myself, over and over again.

The wind freshened in the afternoon, raising a stiffer sea and trying the
boat and me severely. But the supply of food and the nine breakers of
water enabled the boat to stand up to the sea and wind, and I held on as
long as I dared. Then I removed the sprit, tightly hauling down the peak
of the sail, and we raced along under what sailors call a leg-of-mutton.

Late in the afternoon I sighted a steamer's smoke on the horizon to
leeward, and I knew it either for a Russian cruiser, or, more likely, the
_Macedonia_ still seeking the _Ghost_. The sun had not shone all day,
and it had been bitter cold. As night drew on, the clouds darkened and
the wind freshened, so that when Maud and I ate supper it was with our
mittens on and with me still