eroom to herself,--separated from her mother's by a narrow
passageway, and where the port-holes had been open all day. Now, to be
sure, they were closed; for the sea was rising, and already the spray
dashed against the thick glass. Oh, how must it be in the steerage!
And how did it happen that that nice woman had been obliged to take
her little Signorina in such squalid fashion to _la bella Italia_?

Blythe fell asleep with the sound of creaking timbers in her ears, as
the good ship strained against the rising sea, and when the clear note
of the cornet, playing the morning hymn, roused her from her dreams,
the roaring of wind and waves sent her thoughts with a shock of pity
to the little steerage passenger shut up below. For with such a sea as
this the waves must be sweeping the lower deck, and there could be no
release for the poor little prisoner.

"Vhy you not report that veather from the lookout?" the Captain asked
with mock severity as Blythe appeared at the breakfast table.

The racks were on, and the knives and forks had begun their
time-honoured minuet within their funny little fences. The amateur
"lookout" glanced across the table at her friend and ally the poet,
who nodded encouragingly as she answered:

"Oh, we knew the Captain knew all about it!"

"You think de Capitaen know pretty much eferything, _wie es scheint_!"
was the reply, uttered in so deep a guttural that Blythe knew the old
Viking did not take very seriously the "bit of weather" that seemed to
her so violent. In fact, he owned as much before he had finished his
second cup of coffee.

Yet when she came up the companionway after breakfast, she found a
stout rope stretched across the deck from stanchion to stanchion to
hold on by, the steamer chairs all tied fast to the rail that runs
around the deckhouse, and every preparation made for rough weather.

It was not what a sailor would have called a storm, but the sea was
changed enough from the smiling calm of yesterday. Not many passengers
were on deck, half a dozen, only, reclining in their chairs in the lee
of the deckhouse, close reefed in their heavy wraps; while here and
there a pair of indefatigable promenaders lurched and slid along the
heaving deck arm in arm, or clung to any chance support in a desperate
effort to keep their footing.

Blythe had to buffet her way lustily as she turned a corner to
windward. Holding her golf-cape close about her and jamming her felt
hat well down on h