The captain, Sir Sidney Salt, came slowly forth from his cabin. A daring sailor was Sir Sidney as ever braved gale or faced a foe. Hardly over the middle height, with clean shaven face and faultless cue, his age might have been anything from thirty to forty; but in those mild blue eyes of his no one, it was said, had ever seen a wrathful look, not even when engaged hand-to-hand in a combat to the death on the blood-slippery battle-deck of a French man-o'-war. "Run aloft, Mr. Mackenzie," he said now, "and see what you make of her." In five minutes' time, or even less, young Grant Mackenzie stood once more on the quarter-deck, and the drum was beating to arms. No one would break with a loud word the hushed and solemn silence that fell upon the ship after the men, stripped to the waist, had stood to their guns; and as barefooted boys passed from group to group, scattering the sawdust that each one knew might soon be wet with his own or a comrade's life-blood, many an eye was turned skywards, and many a lip was seen to move in prayer. Jack and Tom stood together. The former was pale as death. "Tom," he whispered, "I had a terrible dream last night. I shall not survive this battle; I do not wish to. Tell her, Tom, tell Gerty I died sword in hand, and that, false as she is, my last thoughts were--" "Stand by the larboard guns!" Jack and Tom flew to their quarters, and in the terrible fight that followed neither love itself nor thoughts of home, except in the minds of the wounded and dying that were borne below, could find a place. CHAPTER III. AN INTERRUPTED PROPOSAL. "None without hope e'er loved the brightest fair, But love can hope when reason would despair." Perhaps never was youthful maiden less prepared to listen to the addresses of a would-be wooer than was Gerty Keane when she entered the tartan boudoir that evening at Grantley Hall. She was little more than a child even now, only lately turned seventeen; and before Jack went away to sea--now two years and a month ago--I believe that most of the love-making between them had been conducted through the media of bon-bons and an occasional wild flower, though it ended with farewell tears, a lock of bonnie hair, and a miniature, both of which Jack had taken away with him, and, like a true lover, worn next his heart ever since the parting. Gerty's cheeks were flushed to-night, her eyes shone, her very lips were rosier than usual. Sir Digby Auld sprang up as nimbly as his figure would permit, and advanced to meet the girl with outstretched hands. The baronet was verging on forty, but dressed in the height of youthful fashion; he was a trifle pompous, and he was likewise a trifle podgy.