“All right; that’ll do. You can go forward;” and I went below, very well satisfied with the Dutchmen’s refusal to live aft. Not for my own sake; indeed, there was a laugh here and there to be got out of the ignorance and talk and strange English of Bol and of Galen. I thought of my lady Aurora. How would _she_ enjoy the company of those Dutchmen at table, the society of those heavy, lumpish forecastle hands, half-boors, half-savages? I suppose that never before in the history of marine disaster was a girl situated as was this señorita. Are you who read this a girl? Figure yourself, madam, on board a little ship; you are scarcely able to speak the tongue of the crew; your only associate is a rough seaman, your sitting room is a small, old-fashioned cabin, your bedroom a bit of a hole up in a corner, lighted by an eye called a scuttle, that winks at the leaping sea, your meals the pork and beef of the ocean, your diversions the fancies that come out of the running hills of water of the gale, out of the silent, swimming surface of the calm. Can you imagine the ceaseless heaving of the deck, the long days of the crying of the wind, the creaking and straining of a tumbling timber-built craft, the sullen roar of smitten and parted waters, the indescribable odors of the hold? When I left the deck that day, after calling the men aft and choosing Galen to act as second mate, on stepping below, I found the lady Aurora leaning against the door of the cabin, with her arms folded upon her breast and her eyes fixed upon the deck. She did not immediately see me. I stood viewing her. She was attired in a white drill, or duck dress of her own making. It would have been cold wear but for certain hidden clothing she had contrived for herself. She looked a fine figure of a woman. She lifted up her eyes, released her breast from the embrace of her arms, and extended her hand. I brought her to a seat--it was what she wanted--and sat beside her. We sat together for near an hour, because we both had something to say, and it took us long to communicate our minds, though, to be sure, these passages of laborious intercourse were never teasing or fatiguing to me, however _she_ may have found them; for there was a pleasure not hard to understand in the mere watching her face when she talked or signed to me. Her expressions were rich and manifold; her eyes darkened, softened, brightened, shone with fire, dimmed as with tears, like the figure of a star in the sea over which the scattered mists of the calm night are floating. But here will I put into plain English the words and signs we exchanged while we sat together at this time. It may well come to it, for I understood her and I know what myself said. Thus, then, ran this conversation: “Señor Fielding, have the men rebelled?” “No, why do you ask?” “I stepped up yonder stairs just now and saw you talking to the men.” “It is true. I am captain, Bol is mate, someone must be chosen to take Bol’s place.”