watching as the huge cloud grew darker, with a rusty stain in it, while three or four broad-backed swells, one beyond the other, rose up black against the setting moon, as if they'd plunge right into her. Miss Hyde turned round, with one hand on the bulwark to steady herself, and half looked at me. "I thought--" said she; "where is papa?--I thought my father--" I begged pardon for intruding, but next minute she appeared to have forgotten it, and said, in a musing sort of way, partly to herself, partly to me--"I seem to _remember_ it all--as if I just saw that black wave--and--that monstrous cloud--over again! Oh! really that is the _very_ same top it had _then_--see!" "Yes," said I, leaning forward, with a notion I _had_ seen it before, though heaven knew when. "Did you ever read about Columbus and Vasco da Gama?" asked she, though directly afterwards her features broke into a laughing smile as she caught sight of mine--at the thought, I suppose, of my ridiculous figure the last time she saw me. "No, never," said I; "but look to windward, ma'am; 'tis coming on a squall again. For heaven's sake, Miss Hyde, go in! We're to have another shower, and that pretty thick. I wonder the mate don't stow the royals." "What do you mean?" said she, turning. "Why are you alarmed, sir? I see nothing particular." The sea was coming over, in a smooth, round-backed swell, out of a dirty, thick jumble of a sky, with a pitchblack line behind--what Ford would have called "wild" by daylight; but the young lady's eye naturally saw no more in it than a dark night. Here the Judge came over from the binnacle, giving me a nod, as much as to say he recollected me. "I am afraid, sir," said I, "if you don't make haste, you'll get wet." "How!" said Sir Charles, "'tis an exceedingly pleasant night, I think, after such a deuced hot day. They don't know how to cool rooms here--this perpetual wood retains heat till midnight, sir! That detestable pitch precludes walking--the sea absolutely glares like tin. _Why_ do you suppose so now--eh, young gentleman?" said he again, turning back, all of a sudden, with his daughter on his arm. "Why--why--why, Sir Charles," said I, hesitating betwixt sham innocence and scarce knowing what reason to give; "why, I just think--that is to say, it's my feeling, you see." "Ah, ah, I _do_ see," replied the Judge, good-humouredly; "but you shouldn't ape the sailor, my good fellow, as I fancy you do a little. I don't particularly admire the class, but they always have grounds for what they say in their profession, frequently even acute. At your aunt's, Lady Somers's, now, Violet, who was naturally so surrounded by naval officers, what I had to object to was, not their want of intelligence, but their forwardness. Eh! eh! who--what is _that_?" exclaimed he suddenly, looking straight up into the dark, as five or six large drops fell on his face out of it. All at once you heard a long sigh, as it were, in the canvass aloft, a