‘It was like this, sir,’ exclaimed Wetherly. ‘Forrest and me had agreed to keep a four hours’ lookout. He was to stand from eight to twelve. I lay down on the fo’c’sle, believing the lady safe below, where she’d been pretty nigh ever since you and the men went ashore. I was awoke by a noise that sounded to me like the report of a gun. It was then about six bells, sir. I thought I’d just walk aft to see if all was right with the lady. Audacious as I knew that there fellow Forrest to be, speaking of him as a fo’c’sle hand, and capable of any sort of hinsolence and mutiny and the likes of that, I had no fear of him whilst he was left alone to keep a lookout with the hentertainment of thinking about the money him and his mates was to dig up. Well, as I reached the quarter-deck the lady came out of the cabin. The light was burning dim, just as you found it when you came aboard. She held a pistol in her hand, and she says to me quite coolly: “A man came into my cabin just now. I heard him trying the handle of my door, and I took up this pistol, and when he walked in, I said: “Who are you? What do you want?” he answered; and I pointed my pistol at him and fired. I believe I have killed him. Will you go and see?” I thought she was walking in her sleep, so quiet she talked. I went to her cabin, and saw Forrest lying upon the deck. I turned him over, and he was stone dead; shot through the heart, I reckon. I dragged his body into your cabin, where it’s a-lying now. The lady then asked to keep company with me on the poop; and so it was you found us a-walking together, sir.’ ‘Brave Louise!’ I murmured, moved to the utterance of her Christian name, though this was the first time I had ever given it her, close and ceaseless as our association had been. Yet an instant’s reluctance, regret, or bashfulness followed my pronunciation of it—even at such a moment as that!—to the memory that arose in me with the velocity of thought of the proud eyes, the haughty coldness of the lofty, disdainful, elegant Miss Temple of the _Countess Ida_. But what she had done was a thing not to be referred to again now. I felt the piteousness of her distress, shame, and horror in her silence: by-and-by she would be able to speak of it collectedly, if there were need indeed to recur to it at all. ‘No fear of the boat overhauling us, now, I think, Wetherly?’ I exclaimed. ‘Lord, no, sir; without e’er a sail to spread either. That swim of yourn was a bold venture, Mr. Dugdale. Ye must ha’ managed the job in first-rate style. Wasn’t no lookout kept?’ His questions led me into telling the story. Miss Temple listened eagerly, our hands remaining locked; again and again she broke into an exclamation with some cry of alarm, some ejaculation of sympathy. ‘You called me brave just now,’ she said; ‘but how is your behaviour to be expressed?’