I witnessed no embarrassment, and, in honest truth, there was no cause for embarrassment. Yet I do not suppose that an English girl--at least, that many English girls--would have made this little business of suggesting apparel, and hinting at clothing which a man is not supposed to know anything at all about until he is married, so pleasant and easy as did this Spanish maiden. Well, her ladyship was now supplied with materials for warm clothing, and that same afternoon she went to work on the coat. Hard work it was. She wanted shears for such cloth as that, and managed with difficulty with a sailor’s knife fresh from the grindstone; yet, by next afternoon, having worked all that day and all next morning, she had given something of the shape of her own figure to the coat. She put it on for me to look at. It wrapped her bravely; and when, with white teeth showing, she placed the cap on her head, her beauty--and beauty dark, speaking, impressive I must call it--took a quality of brightness, a piquancy that comes to beauty from male attire; in her case wanting when ordinarily dressed, of such gravity and dignity was her bearing, of such a natural, womanly loftiness were the whole figure and looks of her. CHAPTER XXIV. A SAILOR’S WILL. After a troublesome spell of stormy weather there happened a fine afternoon, and when the evening drew around the shadow was richer in stars than any tropic night I ever beheld. The wind was light; the ocean breathed in a long swell from the north; the atmosphere was frosty, but sweet and comfortably endurable. We had sent down our royal yards, yet to-night was a night for royals and studding sails--a night to be made the most of. The ocean was off guard, asleep, and easily might we have stolen past the slumbering sentinel, clothed from truck to waterway in the tall, wide wings we had expanded in the north. But the old villain was not to be trusted; twas but a snort and a stir with him down here, _then_ a hideous black cloud flying at your ship, and hail and wind to which the stoutest must give his back. So this evening we flapped slowly onward under topgallant sails and courses, and the long naked poles of the royal masts made a wreck of the fabric to the eye up aloft as they swung the dim buttons of their trucks under the stars. It was seven o’clock. I had an hour to smoke my pipe in before my watch came round. I stood on the brig’s quarter, leaning upon the bulwark rail. The sea ran in thick, noiseless folds like black grease, and I hung smoking and hearkening to a queer respiration out upon the water--the noise of the blowing of grampuses sunk in the blackness. Presently my name was pronounced. I turned, and by the light in the companion way beheld the figure of the boy Jimmy. “What is it?” “The captain wants to see you, master.” I knocked the fire out of my pipe.