To readers who are not well acquainted with ship-life, it may seem strange that Minnie should have been able to keep herself so free from observation; but there really can be--and there often is--as much exclusiveness on board a passenger-ship as there is in society on land. You may live in a ship for months, and travel for thousands upon thousands of miles over the seemingly interminable waste of waters, without having any more personal knowledge of those who sleep within a few yards of you than you would have of them if you and they were living at the extreme ends of a great city. When the long, long voyage is at an end, and the ship is being piloted into the bay that skirts the land of Pisgah, men and women whom you do not remember ever to have seen before appear magically on deck; and you wonder where they come from, and how it is you have not set eyes on them during all the time that you and they have been living in the wonderful house of wood and iron that has brought you safely over the raging seas. Joshua knew the Lascar directly he saw him on board, and was not pleased to find that he was one of the crew. But the man did his duty, and worked as well and apparently as willingly as the other sailors; and as he was uniformly respectful, Joshua could not, even if he had been so inclined, treat him harshly with any sense of justice. And so the "Merry Andrew," containing within its wooden walls its load of human love and hate, cleaves through the ocean onward to its goal steadily and patiently, while before it, with every new rising of the sun, a monotonous hill of waters, never varying, never changing, lies in the gray distance mocking its progress. Through cold weather, through hot weather, burnt up in the torrid zone, and chilled by winds which rush from ice-bound waters; through days when scarce a ripple can be seen on the grand ocean's breast, and others when the waves leap at its throat furiously, as an enemy might do; through nights when the moon rises threateningly in the heavens, like a blazing ball of lurid fire, suggesting thoughts of a dreadful to-morrow; and through dark nights, solemnly beautiful, when the track of the vessel is marked by the brilliant Medusæ (the sailor's girdle of Venus) which gleam and shine--a line of living light--in the wondrous sea: through all these, with unerring faith, the ship pursues its way steadily and patiently to the garden of the world. Now the captain smells the breeze, and hoarse cries, unintelligible to all but the initiated, travel about the ship to clap on sail and make good use of the breath of Boreas. Then the ship dashes on like a god drunk with joy, dives into awful depths, and climbs water-mountains that a moment ago threatened to fall in upon it and dash it to pieces. The curling seas break over the deck, and the toilers that are battling with wind and wave cling fast for dear life to ropes and spars; while ever and anon