re thinking of something else."

In fact Hughes had been gazing up into the speaker's face, and had
forgotten all about the game.

"A game at chess on a raft in the Indian Ocean is another thing to one
in a lady's drawing-room," remarked the missionary, who had been looking
on at the play, with a smile on his face; "and yet," he continued, "it
has been much the same kind of game as usually takes place between a
lady and gentleman thinking only of each other."

"Oh, how I should like to have my foot once more on the carpet of that
same drawing-room!" exclaimed Isabel. "This eternal hoping against hope
is dreary work."

"We have known worse moments together, Isabel," remarked Hughes, who had
raised himself from his elbow to a sitting position, and was gazing
intently over the waves.

"I dare say I am impatient, Enrico; but everything seems to go wrong.
First of all the storm, and then, when safely moored in the land-locked
bay, where everything seemed so quiet, the frightful affair with the
Malays. I think I can hear their terrible yells yet." And the girl
covered her eyes with her hands.

Hughes had risen, and was leaning moodily against a pile of boxes, and
still gazing over the sea.

"No sooner," continued Isabel, "had we made all right than the pirate
schooner was upon us, and, as if that was not sufficient, the storm
which caused my dear father's death followed."

"To me, Isabel, there seems still one bright point in all the black past
you are looking into," replied Hughes, as his gaze left the distant
horizon, to fix itself on Isabel's fair face.

Raising her lustrous black eyes, and returning the look with one of deep
confiding tenderness, Isabel placed her hand on his arm, as she
continued--

"But just as we were close to land, when I could see the undulations of
the coast line, and mark the clumps of trees on the shore, to be driven
away,--and now this fearfully monotonous life, ever rising and falling
on the waves. One of these days we shall see Madagascar, and just as we
are about to land, be blown to sea again."

"Sail ho!" shouted Hughes, in a voice which startled every one on board.

"You are right!" exclaimed Captain Weber, starting to his feet. "See
there away to the westward." And he laid his brown hand on the mate's
shoulder, pointing in the direction named; and, sure enough, no bigger
than a man's hand, like the wing of some far-away sea-gull, a small
patch of white appeared on the