She hung her head, and beat with her fingers upon her knuckles, as though she needed some exercise of that sort to enable her to suppress her emotions or her tears. Wilkins came under the skylight to ask if I was ready for breakfast. I bade him bring it to us; and he arrived with some coffee and cold meat and biscuit. I could not induce the girl to eat. Even when she took a sip of coffee she scarcely seemed able to swallow it. Her misery was wretched to see. Sometimes she would start and send a wild sweeping look round the horizon; often she would moan. I tried to put some heart into her; but I could find little to say, ignorant as I then was of what the crew meant to do. Most of them seemed to be in or about the galley. A few stood in the doorway, and their behaviour suggested that there were others inside to whose utterance, whatever form it took, they listened with attention, sometimes glancing aft at us. Shortly before nine o’clock I said to Miss Temple that the crew were coming aft at that hour, and requested her to go to her own cabin that she might be out of sight of them. ‘Cannot I remain on deck?’ she exclaimed. ‘My suspense will be a torment. You are banishing me to an underground cell.’ ‘You will withdraw to your cabin, if you please, Miss Temple. We are here dealing with a crew of men who are now without a head, and whose temper may grow lawless whenever they shall realise that they are their own masters.’ ‘You will come to me the moment you are at liberty, Mr. Dugdale?’ ‘Most assuredly.’ I accompanied her to the companion, and watched her as she descended the steps. She halted at the bottom of the ladder to look up at me with eyes of appealing grief. How close she had come to my heart I might not have been able to successfully guess till that moment. I longed to take her in my arms, to entreat her forgiveness for any act or speech of sternness or harshness, to soothe her with all bright and comforting hopes that it was in my power to utter. A step carried her out of my sight, but for some minutes after, the memory of her beautiful appealing eyes dominated all other thoughts, and I could think of nothing but her noble figure, the grief of her colourless high-bred face, the suggestion I found in her attitude of her yearning for my presence and protection—profoundly touching to me who loved her, spite of not knowing that the motive of her longing was to be found in no other sentiment than that of her fear. Presently the carpenter came out of the galley knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and advanced slowly to the poop, followed by most of the crew, who halted opposite the cuddy front. ‘The cabin’ll be the place to talk in,’ said he; ‘there’ll be no hearing of one another up here. There’s Joe Wetherly’ll keep a lookout whilst you and me are below.’ ‘I am ready,’ I answered.