t service. Now, if I had picked up two people that
way, it would have been two old men. But he gets a couple of lovely
ladies; that's the way the world goes. The ladies made me pretty nigh
swear that I'd never set foot on shore till I found you. I would have
been glad enough to stay there all day and make promises to those
women; but my time was short, and I had to leave them to Captain Guy.
So I did keep a lookout for the _Sparhawk_, and heard of her from two
vessels coming north, and finally fell in with you. And a regular
lunatic you were when I took you on board; but that's not to be
wondered at; and you seem to be all right now."

"Did you not bring me any message from them?" I asked.

"Oh, yes; lots," said the captain. "Let me see if I can remember some
of them." And then he knit his brows and tapped his head, and repeated
some very commonplace expressions of encouragement and sympathy.

The effect of these upon me was very different from what the captain
had expected. I had hoped for a note, a line--anything direct from
Bertha. If she had written something which would explain the meaning of
those last words from Mary Phillips, whether that explanation were
favorable or otherwise, I would have been better satisfied; but now my
terrible suspense must continue.

"Well," said the captain, "you don't seem cheered up much by word from
your friends. I was too busy looking at them to rightly catch
everything they said, but I know they told me they were going to London
in the _Glanford_. This I remembered, because it struck me what a jolly
piece of good luck it all was for Captain Guy."

"And for what port are you bound?" I asked. "La Guayra," he said. "It
isn't a very good time of the year to be there; but I don't doubt that
you can find some vessel or other there that will take you north, so
you're all right."

I was not all right. Bertha was saved. I was saved; but I had received
no message. I knew nothing; and I was going away from her.

Two or three days after this, the captain came to me and said: "Look
here, young man; you seem to be in the worst kind of doleful dumps.
People who have been picked up in the middle of the ocean don't
generally look like that. I wonder if you're not a little love-sick on
account of a young woman on the _Glanford_."

I made no answer; I would not rebuke him, for he had saved my life; but
this was a subject which I did not wish to discuss with a sea-captain.

"If that's reall