came a seafaring man to the
hotel with a letter. I gave a shout of joy. It was from the captain of
the _Eastern Star_. As I read the first lines of it I whisked my hand
over it, but she laid her own upon it and drew it away. "I have seen
it," said she, in a cold, quiet voice. "I may as well see the rest,
too."

"DEAR SIR," said the letter,

"Mr. Vansittart is down with the small-pox, and we are blown so far
on our course that we don't know what to do, he being off his head and
unfit to tell us. By dead reckoning we are but three hundred miles from
Funchal, so I take it that it is best that we should push on there,
get Mr. V. into hospital, and wait in the Bay until you come. There's
a sailing-ship due from Falmouth to Funchal in a few days' time, as I
understand. This goes by the brig _Marian_ of Falmouth, and five pounds
is due to the master, Yours respectfully,

"JNO. HINES."

She was a wonderful woman that, only a chit of a girl fresh from school,
but as quiet and strong as a man. She said nothing--only pressed her
lips together tight, and put on her bonnet.

"You are going out?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Can I be of use?"

"No; I am going to the doctor's."

"To the doctor's?"

"Yes. To learn how to nurse a small-pox case."

She was busy at that all the evening, and next morning we were off with
a fine ten-knot breeze in the barque _Rose of Sharon_ for Madeira. For
five days we made good time, and were no great way from the island; but
on the sixth there fell a calm, and we lay without motion on a sea of
oil, heaving slowly, but making not a foot of way.

At ten o'clock that night Emily Vansittart and I stood leaning on the
starboard railing of the poop, with a full moon shining at our backs,
and casting a black shadow of the barque, and of our own two heads
upon the shining water. From the shadow a broadening path of moonshine
stretched away to the lonely sky-line, flickering and shimmering in the
gentle heave of the swell. We were talking with bent heads, chatting
of the calm, of the chances of wind, of the look of the sky, when there
came a sudden plop, like a rising salmon, and there, in the clear light,
John Vansittart sprang out of the water and looked up at us.

I never saw anything clearer in my life than I saw that man. The moon
shone full upon him, and he was but three oars' lengths away. His face
was more puffed than when I had seen him last, mottled here and there
with dark scabs, his mouth