“Yes, it’s all over. It is easy for you people to speak who have never been lost at sea. It will never be over for me. If I were to live to be a hundred I should feel it all the same. The hauling up and the hauling down of that dreadful sail, carrying us right away out into the sea when we wanted to get home, and then flopping down all in a moment, while we rocked and pitched till I felt I must be pitched out. Oh, how I implored them to go back! ‘Just turn back!’ I cried. ‘Why don’t you turn back? We are always going further and further, instead of nearer. And oh! what will papa say and Katherine?’ They laughed at first, and told me they were tacking, and I begged them, for Heaven’s sake, not to tack, but to run home. But they would not listen to me. Oh, they are all very nice and do what you like when it doesn’t matter; but when it’s risking your life, and you hate them and are miserable and can’t help yourself, then they take their own way.” “But they couldn’t help it either,” cried Evelyn, the rector’s daughter. “They had to tack; they could not run home when the wind was against them.” “What do I care about the wind?” cried Stella. “They should not have made me go out if there was a wind. Papa said we were never to go out in a wind. I told them so. I said, ‘You ought not to have brought me out.’ They said it was nothing to speak of. I wonder what it is when it is something to speak of! And then we shipped a sea, as they called it, and I got drenched to the very skin. Oh, I don’t say they were not kind. They took off their coats and put round me, but what did that do for me? I was chilled to the very bone. Oh, you can’t think how dreadful it is to lie and see those sails swaying and to hear the men moving about and saying dreadful things to each other, and the boat moving up and down. Oh!” cried Stella, clasping her hands together and looking as if once more she was about almost to faint away. “Stella, spare yourself, dear. Try to forget it; try to think of something else. It is too much for you when you dwell on it,” Katherine said. “Dwell on it!” cried Stella, reviving instantly. “It is very clear that _you_ never were in danger of your life, Kate.” “I was in danger of _your_ life,” cried Katherine, “and I think that was worse. Oh, I could tell you a story, too, of that night on the pier, looking out on the blackness, and thinking every moment--but don’t let us think of it, it is too much. Thank God, it is all over, and you are quite safe now.” “It is very different standing upon the pier, and no doubt saying to yourself what a fool Stella was to go out; she just deserves it all for making papa so unhappy, and keeping me out of bed. Oh, I know that was what you were thinking! and being like me with only a plank between me and--don’t you know? The one is very, very different from the other, I can tell you,” Stella said, with a little flush on her cheek.