'You have no right to keep this young lady with you. Captain Burke sticks to his hull from sordid motives. That's his look-out. Life's more precious than cargo. Miss Otway was entrusted to my care. I insist upon her being permitted to accompany us. Her father looks to me for her well-being. She is eager to go with us and you will not suffer it.' Thus he raved on. 'Leave this cabin,' cried the captain, springing up. His face was full of blood, his blue eyes blazed; he had already been worked up into madness, and I was certain by his insane manner of starting from his chair, if the doctor did not go instantly the captain would destroy him. But it was at that moment that the boatswain bawled on deck. 'Come up!' were the words I caught, sounding through the companion-hatch in a muffled note of thunder. 'Up with them who's going.' More was said which I did not hear. 'By keeping her, you are murdering her, and her blood is on your head!' cried Mr. Owen like a woman in a frenzy of passion, and rushed up the ladder. 'Don't believe him,' exclaimed Mrs. Burke, grasping my hand, with a wild, short, passionate laugh that had the note of an hysteric sob. 'You shall see the boat presently. You shall see it out upon the water. You will judge then who would kill you. Oh, not I, not I, my flower; not I, your poor old nurse!' I clasped her round the neck and sobbed. When I looked up Captain Burke had left the cabin. We were apparelled for the deck, and finding the captain gone, we followed, and though scarcely five minutes had elapsed since the boatswain bawled, already the long-boat was some ship's lengths distant, bowed almost to the line of her lee rail by a great square of white canvas, shaded here and there where the moisture had not dried out of it. She looked full of people as she rose to the head of the folds, ripping through it with the icy breeze fresh off her bow, till the lift of the foam sparkled in a fountain-like arch right athwart her forward, and her speed raised two humps of froth on either quarter, and shot a long milk-white glance of wake, bright as a meteor's line of light, far astern of her, lifting and falling on the swell, and defined to its extremity even amidst the smoke and snap of the running seas. Captain Burke with one hand grasping the edge of the companion stood watching her. When we came up his first words were, after a brief pause: 'They'll overhaul the ship if they can only get a sight of her. Look how she sails, and how finely she is handled.' 'She may be the means of saving us,' cried Mrs. Burke. 'What use were they on board of us? But they're useful there. They'll be sighted and rescued, and we shall be hunted after.'