vant, and that which she
hath said shall be done! If you come down on to the lower deck in ten
minutes everything shall be ready."

With this he disappeared down the companion-way.

About five minutes afterwards Andrew Murgatroyd showed his grizzled,
long-bearded face with its high forehead, heavy brows, and broad-set
eyes, long nose and shaven upper lip, just above the stairway and said,
for all the world as though he might have been giving out the number of
the hymn in his beloved Ebenezer at Smeaton:

"If it pleases yer Ladyship, his Lordship is ready, and if you'll please
come down I'll show you the way."

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Murgatroyd!" said Zaidie, getting up and going
towards the companion-way; "but I'm afraid you don't think that--I mean
you don't seem to take very much interest----"

"If your Ladyship will pardon me," said the old man, standing aside to
let her go down, "it is not my business to think on board his Lordship's
vessel. I am his servant, and my fathers have been his fathers' servants
for more years than I'd like to count. If it wasn't that way I wouldn't
be here. Will your Ladyship please to come down?"

Zaidie bowed her beautiful head in recognition of this ages-old
devotion, and said as she passed him, more sweetly than he had ever
heard human lips speak:

"Thank you, Mr. Murgatroyd. You've taught me something in those few
words that we have no knowledge of in the States. Good service is as
honourable as good mastership. Thank you."

Murgatroyd put up his lower lip and half smiled with his upper, for he
was not yet quite sure of this radiant beauty, who, according to his
ideas, should have been English and wasn't. Then, with a rather clumsy
and yet eloquent gesture, he showed her the way down to the air-chamber.

She nodded to him with a smile as she passed in through the air-tight
door, and when she heard the levers swing to and the bolts shoot into
their places she felt as though, for the time being, she had said
goodbye to a friend.

Her husband was waiting for her almost fully clad in his
breathing-dress. He had hers all ready to put on, and when the necessary
changes and investments had been made, Zaidie found herself clad in a
costume which was not by any means unlike the diving-dresses of common
use, save that they were very much lighter in construction.

The helmets were smaller, and not having to withstand outside pressure
they were made of welded aluminum, lined thickly wi