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ght into the darkness of the wind-swept deck. It was a moment before she could distinguish objects at all. Then with practiced step she went swiftly to the crouching figure at the distant end of the long seat. "I have learned something of her," murmured Turnbull. "That was her father's brother, Escalante, who came aboard with her. That woman at Sancho's was not her mother. _She_ has been dead for many a year. She was own sister to De la Cruz. There is something back of their sending this girl to San Francisco. Hush! Here she comes!" With her arm thrown about the drooping girl, the stewardess came slowly leading her to the doorway. The swinging portals had slammed shut in the last plunge of the Idaho, and as the buoyant craft rose high on the next billow, Turnbull and Loring both turned to open them. The light shone full on their calm, soldierly faces as the stewardess thanked them, and the shrinking child lifted up her frightened eyes for one brief moment, glanced quickly from one to the other, then, with a low cry, slipped, limp and senseless, through the woman's arms and fell in a dark heap upon the deck. CHAPTER XI. Another day and the Idaho was battling for her life and that of every soul aboard. Forging her way southward, she took the furious buffets of the gale on the starboard quarter--"the right front," as Turnbull would have put it had he not been too ill to care a fig where she was hit, and only wished she might go down if that would keep her still. Sea after sea burst over the dripping decks and tossed her like a cockle shell upon the waters. Time and again the bows would plunge deep in some rushing surge and then, uplifting, send torrents washing aft and pour cataracts from her sides. Long before the dawn of day the red-eyed commander had ordered the southward course abandoned and headed his laboring craft for the opposite shores. Harbor there was none north of the deep sheltered bay of La Paz, but there would be relief from the tremendous poundings of the billows when once under the lee of Old California. Obedient to her helm, the Idaho now met "dead ahead" both wind and sea. The rolling measurably ceased. The pitching fore and aft continued, but the passenger list by this time cared no longer to discriminate. It was all one to all but one of their number. Loring, of the engineers, thanks to long weeks of illness of another sort, was mercifully exempted from the pangs of seasickness, but the
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