It was on the afternoon of the fifth day that we fell in with a Peruvian man-of-war brig. She backed her topsail and sent a boat. The young officer in command spoke French very fluently, and Miss Temple and I between us were able to make him understand our story. He returned to his ship to report what I had said, and presently came back with a couple of Irish seamen, to whose services to help us to carry the barque to Valparaiso we were, he said, very welcome. This I considered an extraordinary stroke of fortune, for in so slender a ship’s company as we should still make it was of the utmost consequence that all orders given should be perfectly and instantly intelligible. The Peruvian brig was bound on a cruise amongst the islands, and I earnestly entreated the officer to request his commander to head first of all for the reef upon which I had left Lush and his men, that they might be taken off, if they had not recovered their boat. Down to this point, the three of us in one fashion and another had managed so fairly well, that the acquisition of the two Irish seamen communicated to me a sense of being in command of a very tolerable ship’s company. Miss Temple and I could now enjoy some little leisure apart from a routine that had been harassing with its vexations and incessant demands upon our vigilance. Night after night descended upon us in beauty; the warm wind blew moist with dew; the reflection of the rich and trembling stars quivered in cones of an icy gleam amid the ripples of the breeze-brushed sea; the curl of new moon shone in the west in the wake of the glowing sun to rise nightly fuller and more brilliant yet, till for awhile the barque sailed through an atmosphere that was brimful of the greenish glory of the unclouded planet. There was scarcely, indeed, a condition of this tender tropic passage to Valparaiso that was not favourable to sentiment. Yet my pride rendered it an obligation upon me that before I spoke my love I must make sure of the girl’s own feelings towards me. I watched her with an impassioned eye; I listened to every word that fell from her lips with an ear eager to penetrate to the spirit of her meaning; a smile that seemed in the least degree ambiguous would keep me musing for a whole watch together. Then I would inquire whether I could in honour ask her to be my wife until my protection and care for her had ceased, and she stood to me in the position she had occupied when we had first met aboard the Indiaman. But to this very fine question of conscience I would respond with the consideration that if I did not ask her now, I must continue in a distracting state of suspense and anxiety for many weeks, running, indeed, into months—that is to say, until we should reach home; that she might misconstrue my reserve, and attribute it to indifference; that to make her understand why I did not speak would involve the declaration that my honour was supposed to regard as objectionable.