I applied for permission to annex that boy; he was indeed a treasure, and the joy in the peacock's feathers never palled. His gutta-percha face had an infinite variety of expression, which he could instantly turn on to suit all occasions. It was a fascinating sight to see him going round the group feeding each baby out of the same bottle, one of the old-fashioned horrors with a long indiarubber tube and teat. Those infants who had contemptuously rejected all my offers of nourishment now sat expectantly agape waiting their turn. The scene always reminded me of the artificial feeding of fowls, by the man who goes round the pens squirting liquid down each gaping throat. When we landed at Marseilles there was a wonderful parting between the babies and the cabin boy. They clung to him to the last, and howled dismally when they were carried off by their haggard mothers. One night, during the height of the storm I was asleep on the fixed red velvet seat running round the walls of the summer drawing-room. I lay just under a porthole, to which was attached a rope. The other end of the rope was tied round my arm to prevent my being thrown to the floor by the rolling of the ship. At five o'clock in the morning I was suddenly awakened by hearing my husband's voice shouting in my ear. (My husband not being on board, but in our home in the North of Scotland.) "Sit up! Sit up!" shouted his voice commandingly. Considerably startled I threw myself into a sitting position, and as I did so a gigantic wave shattered the porthole, and the heavy fragments of glass fell on to the pillow where a second before my face had lain. Of course, the water poured in and over me in volumes, and stopped my wrist watch at five a. m., but I had got used to salt water, and in a few minutes the weary captain had waded in, and was disentangling me from my rope and congratulating me on my lucky escape. I told him how it was that I had escaped, and he was not in the least skeptical. On the contrary, he said that he had known some curious things happen in his time, for which there was no accounting; but he always kept a black cat on board. Had the safety of his ship not claimed his whole attention I believe he would have told me some of his experiences, but when, at last, the weather abated he was too much in need of rest to be bothered by any one. My husband had no knowledge of the service he had rendered me. At five a. m. that morning he was asleep at home, and had no premonition of danger, or any recollection on waking of the rôle his astral counterpart had undoubtedly played. What is this astral counterpart of man? His soul and spirit dwells in a shroud of flesh, and the feat of getting out of that shroud of flesh at will is the aim of all occultists. It is to the astral world they go, soul and spirit encased in the astral sheath we term the astral body.