lk aft, feeling pretty queer, I can tell
you, when I saw Miss Minturn just coming up from the cabin below.

"I haven't said anything about Miss Minturn, but she and her father,
who was an elderly English gentleman and an invalid, who had never
left his berth since we took him up at Singapore, were our only
passengers, except, of course, myself. She was a beautiful girl, with
soft blue eyes and golden hair, and a little pale from constantly
staying below to nurse her father.

"Of course I had had little or nothing to say to her, for her father
was a good deal of a swell and I was only a marine; but now she saw me
standing there by myself, and she came right up to me. 'Can you tell
me, sir,' she said, 'if anything else has happened? They are making a
great din in the engine-room. I have been looking out of our port, and
the vessel seems to me to be stationary.' She stopped at that, and
waited to hear what I had to say, but I assure you I would have liked
to have had her go on talking for half an hour. Her voice was rich and
sweet, like that of so many Englishwomen, although, I am happy to say,
a great many of my countrywomen have just as good voices; and when I
meet any of them for the first time, I generally give them the credit
of talking in soft and musical notes, even though I have not had the
pleasure of hearing them speak."

"Look here," said the blacksmith, "can't you skip the girl and get back
to the Devil?"

"No," said the marine, "I couldn't do that. The two are mixed together,
so to speak, so that I have to tell you of both of them."

"You don't mean to say," exclaimed Mrs. Fryker, speaking for the first
time, and by no means in soft and musical tones, "that he swallowed
her?"

"I'll go on with the story," said the marine; "that's the best way, and
everything will come up in its place. Now, of course, I wasn't going to
tell this charming young woman, with a sick father, anything about the
Water-devil, though what reason to give her for our standing still here
I couldn't imagine; but of course I had to speak, and I said, 'Don't be
alarmed, miss, we have met with an unavoidable detention; that sort of
thing often happens in navigation. I can't explain it to you, but you
see the ship is perfectly safe and sound, and she is merely under sail
instead of having her engines going.'

"'I understood about that,' said she, 'and father and I were both
perfectly satisfied; for he said that if we had a good breeze