es under which they met with
their trouble. Ferrier worked as long as he could, and then joined the
others at tea--that most pleasant of all meetings on the sombre North
Sea. The young man was glum in face, and he could not shake off his
abstraction. At last he burst out, in answer to Fullerton, "I feel like
a criminal. I haven't seen fifty per cent of the men who came, and I've
sent back at least half a dozen who have no more right to be working
than they have to be in penal servitude. It is ghastly, and yet what can
we do? I have no mawkish sentiment, but I could have cried over one
fellow. His finger was broken, and then blood-poisoning set in. Up to
the collar-bone his arm is discoloured, and the glands are blackish-blue
here and there. He smiled as he put out his hand, and he said, 'He du
hurt, sir. I've had hardly an hour's sleep since the first breeze, and,
when I du get over, I fare to feel as if cats and dogs and fish and
things was bitin'.' Then I asked him if he had stuck to work. Yes; he
had helped to haul as late as this last midnight. Now he's gone back,
and I must see him, at any price, to-morrow, or I cannot save that arm.
I couldn't hurry like a butcher, and so there will be many a man in pain
this night."

Marion Dearsley was deeply stirred. "I wish I could go round with you
to-morrow and search out any bad cases."

"I must tell you that, so far as I can see, almost every conceivable
kind of accident happens during a violent gale--everything, from death
to a black eye. But, all the same, I wish you _could_ come with me."

Blair burst into his jolly laugh; he was such a droll dog was Blair, and
he _would_ have his joke, and he _would_ set up sometimes, as a sly
rascal, don't you know--though he was the tenderest and kindest of
beings.

"This is what your fine scheme has come to, is it? Oh! I see a grand
chance for the novel-writers."

Oh, Blair was indeed a knowing customer. He made Ferrier look a little
foolish; but the ladies knew him, Tom Lennard adored him, and the grand,
calm Marion smiled gently on him. In the case of any other man it would
have seemed like sacrilege to talk of a sentimental flirtation before
that young woman; but then she sometimes called him Uncle John and
sometimes Mr. Blair, according to the company they were in; so what
would you have?

After tea came the men's time for smoking; the bitter night was thick
with stars; the rime lay on the bulwarks, and, when the moon cam