topher was, perched upon
that bank of ill omen, the force of the water was always greatest in any
agitation, and there was ever present to our minds the chance that she
might go to pieces before some sudden onslaught of the sea. In the face
of that common peril we all forgot our watchfulness of each other, and
Jensen and the sailors worked as earnestly to do all they could for the
safety of our vessel as on our side Lancelot and I and the stout
fellows under our command worked.

It was in all this trouble and hubbub that Marjorie showed herself to be
the gallantest girl in the world. She was resolved to stay with
Lancelot, but she was no less resolved to hamper him not at all by her
presence. So when I came at dusk to the Captain's cabin to consult with
Lancelot, who had shifted his quarters thither, I found his sister with
him, but very changed in outward seeming. For she had slipped on a
sea-suit of Lancelot's and her limbs were hid in a pair of seaman's
boots and her fair hair coiled out of sight under a seaman's cap, and in
this sea change she made the fairest lad in the world and might have
been my Lancelot's brother to a hasty eye. She had a mind, she said, to
play the man till fortune mended, and vowed to take her share of work
with the best of us. At which Lancelot smiled sweetly and commended her
wisdom in changing her rig, and as for me I would have adored her more
than before, had that been possible, to find her so adaptable to danger.
But there was little for her to do save to encourage us with her
comradeship, and that she did bravely through it all, acting as any boy
messmate might, and taking her place so naturally and simply in those
hours of trial that it was not until later that I thought how strangely
and how rarely she carried herself and how quietly she played her part.

[Illustration: "HER FAIR HAIR WAS COILED OUT OF SIGHT UNDER A SEAMAN'S
CAP."]

I shall never forget that terrible night on board the ship, with the
waves smacking our poor sides, that groaned at every blow, and the wind
moaning through the ruined rigging in a kind of sobbing way, as if all
the elements were joining in a requiem for our foredoomed lives. There
was never a moment when we could be sure that the next might not be our
last; never a moment when we could not tell that the next wave might not
sweep the ship with riven timbers into hopeless wreck, and plunge us
poor wretches into the stormy seas to struggle for a few secon