“Darling, the dreadful little black thing was only a harmless baby,” replied the husband soothingly. “Baby!” cried the astonished young woman, lifting her head from the cushions and regarding her companion through her undried tears with doubt, as if suspecting him of joking. “I thought it was an ape or some hideous little imp! Baby!” and seeing that there was no joke about what her husband said, she added: “I didn’t know negroes looked like that when babies. I would not touch that loathsome, horrid thing for worlds. It made my flesh fairly quiver to see it even near me.” Walter Burton succeeded in allaying the alarm of his wife only after the train had resumed its rapid journey southward. When Lucy, lulled to sleep by the low music of the guitar which he played to distract her attention from the unpleasant recollection, no longer demanded his presence, Burton sought the smoking-room of the car and passed an hour in solemn, profound meditation, as he puffed continuously fragrant Havanas. “I was wrong! She did not know. Now she never shall if I can prevent it.” Such were the words of Lucy’s husband when throwing away his cigar he arose to rejoin his young wife. * * * * * Many hundred miles from flowery Florida across a watery way, a ship was wildly tossing upon an angry, sullen sea. For three days and nights with ceaseless toil, in constant danger, the weary crew had battled with howling winds and tempestuous waves. A storm of awe-inspiring fury had burst upon the good ship “Adams,” of Boston, bound for Melbourne, on the night of December the nineteenth in that good year of our Lord. The superb seamanship of the skipper, combined with the prompt alacrity of the willing crew, alone saved the ship from adding her broken frame to that countless multitude which rest beneath the waves. The wind was still blowing a gale, but there was perceptibly less force in it, as shrieking it tore through the rigging and against the almost bare masts, than there had been in three days. Two men stood in the cabin, enveloped in oil-skins, with rubber boots reaching above their knees. Their eyes were red from wind and watching, while they answered the heave of the ship wearily as if worn out with the excessive labor of the last seventy-two hours. The men were the two mates of the “Adams.” The captain had sent them below for a glass of grog and a biscuit. There had been no fire in the galley for the three days that the storm had beaten upon the ship. “The skipper must be made of iron,” said the shorter man, Morgan, the second officer. “He has hardly left the deck a minute since the squall struck us, and he is as quick and strong as a shark,” he continued, munching on the biscuit and balancing himself carefully as he raised his glass of grog. “Every inch a sailor is the skipper,” growled the larger man hoarsely.