aspect, the stillness in her of the hushed, unconjecturable, fathomless liquid solitude out of which she had been hurled, stirred them to their souls. I could tell that by the superstitious character of their talk. They told stories of their drowned shipmates’ behaviour on the preceding day--repeated remarks to which nothing but death could give the slightest significance. Johnson in a feeble voice from his mattress said that O’Connor half an hour before the yacht struck told him that he felt very uneasy, and that he’d give all he owned if there were a Roman Catholic priest on board that he might confess to him. He had led a sinful life, and he had made up his mind to give up the sea and to find work if he could in a religious house. ‘I thought it queer,’ added Johnson in accents so weak that they were painful to listen to, ‘that a chap like that there O’Connor, who was always a-bragging and a-grinning and joking, should grow troubled with his conscience all on a sudden. Never knew he was a Papish till he got lamenting that there warn’t a priest aboard to confess to.’ ‘Mates,’ said Finn, whose voice sounded hollow in the darkness, ‘when death’s a-coming for a man he’ll often hail him, sometimes a good bit afore he arrives. The sperrit has ears, and it’s them that hears him, men. O’Connor had heard that hail, but only the secret parts in him onderstood it, and they set him a commiserating of himself for having lived sinfully, and started him on craving for some chap as he at all events could reckon holy, t’whom he could tell how bad he’d been. Though what good the spinning of a long yarn about his hevil ways into an old chap’s ear was going to do him, I’m not here to explain.’ Then Cutbill had something to tell of poor old Jacob Crimp, and Head of a shipmate whose name I forget. But they rumbled away presently from depressing topics into the more cheerful consideration of the contents of the galleon’s hold. I sat hand in hand with Laura listening. ‘This time yesterday,’ said I, ‘the cabin of the “Bride” was a blaze of light. I see the dinner table sparkling with glass and silver, the rich carpet, the elegant hangings, the lustrous glance of mirrors. What is there that makes life so dreamlike and unreal as the ocean? The reality of one moment is in a breath made a vision, a memory of in the next. The noble fabric of a ship melts like a snowflake, and her people vanish as utterly as though they had been transformed into spirits.’ ‘Fire will destroy more completely than the ocean!’ exclaimed Lady Monson. ‘I think not,’ said I; ‘fire leaves ashes, the sea nothing.’ ‘To the eye,’ said Lady Monson. ‘This time to-morrow we may be sailing home, Charles,’ said Laura.