It was like passing from death to life to send the gaze from Lady Monson to Laura as the little sweetheart busily flitted from sunshine to shadow, spreading the garments to the light, her hair flashing and fading as she passed from the radiance into the violet shade, her figure the fairer to my enamoured eyes, maybe, for the shipwrecked aspect of her attire that enriched by fitful and fascinating revelations the beauty of her form by an art quite out of the reach of the nimblest of dressmaking fingers. Her spirits and much of her strength seemed to have returned to her. Often she would look my way and wave her hand to me. Half an hour after noon by the sun--for my watch had stopped when I tumbled overboard, and so had Laura’s and Lady Monson’s--we all assembled under the overhanging counter of the galleon for a midday meal. The sun was almost overhead, and there was very little shadow; which forced us to sit tolerably close together, and I could see that her ladyship did not very much relish this intimate association with the rough sailors; but it was either for her or for them to sit out in the scorching, blinding light, and as she did not offer to go I insisted on the poor fellows keeping their places, though Finn and Cutbill shuffled as though they were for backing away. She perceived my indifference to her sensitiveness and shot a look of hate at me. However, I was not so insensible as she imagined, for I was very careful to scarcely glance at her; for there she sat, unveiled, her head uncovered, close to, to be peered at, if one chose, as if she were a picture or a statue, and I would not pain what weak sense of shame, what haughty confusion there might be in her by a single lift of my eyes to her face, saving when I accosted her or she me. I observed that the sailors were studious in their disregard of her. There was not a man of them I dare say but would have squinted curiously at her out of the corner of his eyes on board the yacht had she shown herself on deck; but here it would have been taking an unfair advantage of her; their instincts as men governed them, and no fine gentleman could ever have exhibited a higher quality of breeding than did these rough Jacks in this respect, as they squatted munching biscuit and potted meat and handing on to one another the jar of sherry and water. But often, though swiftly and very respectfully too, their glances would go to Laura. They would look as though they found something to hearten them in her sweet pale face, her kind smile, her pretty efforts to bear up. ‘There ought to be a ship passing here before long,’ said Finn, with a slow stare seawards; ‘’taint as if this here island was right in with the African coast.’ ‘The “’Liza Robbins” should be looked out for, capt’n,’ said Cutbill; ‘she was dead in our wake when we drawed ahead, steering our course to a hair.’ ‘Strange that all the yacht’s boats should have disappeared,’ said I.