"Bless me, no," he answered, "get her close to leeward, and the ship'll make a breakwater for Mrs. Barclay." "Captain Parsons, what can I say that will in any measure express my gratitude to you? May I take it that a letter addressed to you to the care of the owners of the _Carthusian_ will be sure to reach you on your return?" "Oh, yes. But never you mind about that. What I've done has given me pleasure, and I hope that you'll both live long, and that neither of you by a single look or word will ever cause the other to regret that you fell into the hands of Captain Parsons of the good ship _Carthusian_." Grace gave him a sweet smile. Now that it seemed we were about to leave his ship she could gaze at him without alarm. He broke from its to deliver an order to the second mate, who re-echoed his command in a loud shout. In a moment a number of sailors came racing aft and fell to rounding-in, as it is called, upon the main and main-top sailbraces with loud and hearty songs, which were re-echoed out of the white hollows aloft and combined with the splashing noise of waters and the small music of the wind in the rigging into a true ocean concert for the ear. The machinery of the braces brought the sails on the main to the wind; the ship's way was almost immediately arrested, and she lay quietly sinking and rising with a sort of hush of expectation along her decks, which nothing disturbed save the odd farmyard-like sounds of the live stock somewhere forward. The steamer was now rapidly approaching us, and by this time without the aid of a glass I made her out to be a fine screw yacht of some three hundred and fifty tons, painted black, with a yellow funnel forward of amidships, which gave her the look of a gunboat. She had a charthouse, or some such structure near her bridge, that was very liberally glazed, and blinding flashes leapt from the panes of glass as she rolled to and from the sun as though she were quickly firing cannon charged with soundless and smokeless gunpowder. A figure paced the filament of bridge that was stretched before her funnel. He wore a gold band round his hat and brass buttons on his coat. Two or three men leaned over the head rail viewing us as they approached, but her quarter-deck was deserted. I could find no hint of female apparel or of the blue serge of the yachtsman. Old Parsons, taking his stand at the rail clear of the crowd, waited until the yacht floated abreast, where with a few reverse revolutions of her propeller she came to a stand within easy talking distance--as handsome and finished a model as ever I had seen afloat. "Ho, the yacht, ahoy!" shouted Captain Parsons. "Hallo!" responded the glittering figure from the bridge, manifestly the yacht's skipper. "What yacht is that?" "The _Mermaid_." "Where are you from and where are you bound to?" "From Madeira for Southampton," came back the response. "That will do, Grace," cried I, joyfully.