'I remember all now,' said the gipsy lass, 'and I am very thankful; but they will all be so sad on shore, Chops and Mary and all. You couldn't land me, could you?' 'Ay, little dear,' laughed the skipper, 'we'll land ye; but it will be in Trondhjem. But we've made up our minds to make ye as happy as Arctic summer days are long.' Having once comforted herself with the thought that, although Antony and Chops and all the rest would mourn for her for a time as dead, there would be such a joyful meeting to make up for all when she got back again, she settled herself to be happy and to enjoy her strange, new life. When the captain and the mate and the boy Ben went on deck, the motherly lady dressed her and tidied her hair as much as it ever would tidy--for it was, like Lotty herself, very irrepressible--she sat down to breakfast. Lotty was not shy, no well-brought-up child of the world ever is. She could not even be timid beside so kindly a soul as the skipper's wife. No, she did not care for fish. 'It was nearly all fish in the camp,' she told Mrs Skipper Paterson; but the English bacon was a treat, and the English toast, and, 'Oh those eggs, how beautiful! What are they?' 'Sea-gulls', dear, from the rocks of Tromsö.' 'How large and pointed they are, and so sweetly green; and what are those curious streaks of black and brown, like a baby's writing, all over them?' 'Well,' said Mrs Skipper, who was just a little romantic, as all true sailors are, 'well, Lotty, I think that every egg is a love-letter written by a gull to her charming mate.' 'It seems such a pity to break them though.' 'So I have often thought, but one doesn't mind so much when one is hungry.' 'I love the sea-gulls,' said Lotty, 'and they all love me, and don't mind coming close up; and then they are so neat and so clean, never a feather awry, and with eyes ever so clear and bright. I think they are just little bits of the waves with souls put into them.' When Lotty got on deck she could hardly keep upright, for it was blowing half a gale from the west, and now the bonny bark, with her close-reefed topsails and storm staysails, was standing nor'-east, and away where black clouds had painted the sky from zenith to horizon. The girl looked a queer figure--a wee sou'-wester on her head, which could not hide her hair nor her beauty, and a huge pilot jacket belonging to Ben, the sleeves a bit too long and the garment itself coming right down to her heels. She swayed and swayed till the red-faced mate came to her assistance, tucked her under his arm, and trotted her off for a stroll under the weather bulwarks. Then she felt as if she had been at sea all her life.