dn't want to
talk any more that evening. Mr. Smith--the old gentleman--was as usual
sitting on the skylight near her head, brooding over the long chair but
by no means inimical, as far as his unreadable face went, to those
conversations of the two youngest people on board. In fact they seemed
to give him some pleasure. Now and then he would raise his faded china
eyes to the animated face of Mr. Powell thoughtfully. When the young
sailor was by, the old man became less rigid, and when his daughter, on
rare occasions, smiled at some artless tale of Mr. Powell, the
inexpressive face of Mr. Smith reflected dimly that flash of evanescent
mirth. For Mr. Powell had come now to entertain his captain's wife with
anecdotes from the not very distant past when he was a boy, on board
various ships,--funny things do happen on board ship. Flora was quite
surprised at times to find herself amused. She was even heard to laugh
twice in the course of a month. It was not a loud sound but it was
startling enough at the after-end of the _Ferndale_ where low tones or
silence were the rule. The second time this happened the captain himself
must have been startled somewhere down below; because he emerged from the
depths of his unobtrusive existence and began his tramping on the
opposite side of the poop.

Almost immediately he called his young second officer over to him. This
was not done in displeasure. The glance he fastened on Mr. Powell
conveyed a sort of approving wonder. He engaged him in desultory
conversation as if for the only purpose of keeping a man who could
provoke such a sound, near his person. Mr. Powell felt himself liked. He
felt it. Liked by that haggard, restless man who threw at him
disconnected phrases to which his answers were, "Yes, sir," "No, sir,"
"Oh, certainly," "I suppose so, sir,"--and might have been clearly
anything else for all the other cared.

It was then, Mr. Powell told me, that he discovered in himself an already
old-established liking for Captain Anthony. He also felt sorry for him
without being able to discover the origins of that sympathy of which he
had become so suddenly aware.

Meantime Mr. Smith, bending forward stiffly as though he had a hinged
back, was speaking to his daughter.

She was a child no longer. He wanted to know if she believed in--in
hell. In eternal punishment?

His peculiar voice, as if filtered through cotton-wool was inaudible on
the other side of the deck.