“And I would rather not think of it, just now, Miss Forbes. Perhaps I ought to have set ye ashore among the Cubans. I hope you will not be worse off at sea again.” “I am glad to be at sea again, with you, Captain O’Shea,” said Nora, and she looked him in the eyes like a true viking’s daughter who scorned subterfuge and spoke as her heart moved her. It was perhaps as well that Gerald Van Steen decided to join them just then. “And are ye convinced that the Spanish are not a courteous people when ye meet them by night?” O’Shea cheerfully asked him. “Do you know, I begin to like this filibustering,” answered the industrious young man, who looked as trampish as any of the crew. “One feels so well pleased after he has pulled out of one of these scrapes that it is almost worth while running into it.” He turned to Nora and addressed her with a shade of appeal in his voice: “Will you sit down with me for a while? I have no end of things to talk about.” “Why, certainly, Gerald. Good-by, Captain O’Shea. The top o’ the morning to ye.” The captain bowed and raised his straw hat. His ingenuous countenance wore a somewhat puzzled expression, as if he beheld a new complication in this tumultuous voyage of his. It was well into the forenoon before Johnny Kent found a breathing-spell and climbed above to confer with the skipper. The indomitable engineer appeared aged and haggard. The pain of his burns distressed him and he was spent with worry and weariness. His hands trembled as he pulled himself up the bridge stairway. “I ain’t as young as I was, Cap’n Mike,” he huskily exclaimed. “Blamed if I don’t feel kind of strained and shook up, same as the poor old _Fearless_. Looks like one of them fair-weather gales, don’t it? Bright sky and a big sea and wind to peel your whiskers off before night.” “’Tis a good guess,” soberly replied O’Shea. “Can we weather it, Johnny?” “I don’t want to make the ladies nervous and fretty,” confided the chief, “but we ain’t keepin’ the water down, Cap’n Mike. It will be in the fire-room before dark at this rate----” “And then she will fall off into the trough of the sea and founder,” said O’Shea. “And we have no boats. Will your men stay on duty and keep her going?” “They will, Cap’n Mike. The big nigger feels spry enough to turn to, and the gang is scared to death of him. They believe he’ll murder ’em if they quit on me.” “Well, Johnny, make steam as long as ye can, and if the weather will not moderate I can try to fetch up somewhere before she goes to the bottom.” “I ain’t particularly anxious, Cap’n Mike. I never saw you in a hole you couldn’t work your way out of. Of course, there’s the ladies. How are they, anyhow? The young one is on deck, lookin’ like a morning-glory. But what about Miss Hollister? She ain’t sick, is she?”