I have kept you long at sea. With my escape in the barque from Captain Braine’s island in company with my shipmate Louise, the story of my adventure—the narrative, indeed, of the romance of the wreck—virtually ends. Yet you will wish to see Miss Temple safely home; you will desire to know whether I married her or not; you will also want to hear the latest news of the people of the _Countess Ida_, to learn the fate of the Honourable Mr. Colledge, of the crew of the _Magicienne’s_ cutter, and of the carpenter Lush and his merry gold-hunting men. All may be told in the brief limits of a chapter. For five days Wetherly and Miss Temple and myself navigated the barque without assistance. We managed it thus: the girl took her turn in steering the vessel, and after a very few trials steered with the expertness of a trained hand. I can see her now as she stands at the wheel: her fine figure clear cut against the soft Pacific blue over the stern; her dark and shining eyes bent upon the compass card, or lifting in the beauty of the shadow of their lashes to the white canvas; her hands of ivory delicacy grasping the spokes, and always a smile of sweetness and gladness and hope for me when our glances met. To think of the haughty, aristocratic Miss Louise Temple reduced to it! But she did a deal more than that: she helped us to pull and haul; she cooked for us, she kept a lookout, walking the weather-deck whilst Wetherly steered and I was resting. No complaint ever left her lips; she was gentle and happy in all she did. The sea had dealt with her to some purpose; and she was now as sweet, tender, compliant, as she was before self-willed, insolent, and objectionable in all things but her beauty. The struggle, indeed, would have been a desperate one for us but for the weather. The small but steady sailing breeze that had blown us away from the island continued with a shift of three points only in those five days, and a trifling increase one night, so that we had never occasion to start a sheet or let go a halliard; nothing more were we called upon to do with the gear than to slacken away the braces.