I suppose it would have been early in the new day when Joan took charge of me, and old Timothy brewed the punch and Larry came and went from the cabin to the bridge as a man full of anxieties, and yet in some sense content that it should be so. These foolish nurses of mine had so far told me nothing, nor did they hear me talking with equanimity. An immersion in the sea is often regarded by a sailor, of all men, as a dreadful tragedy. Few of this trade can swim, nor does a sailor ever look upon the water as other than an enemy. So now Larry would have kept me to my bed, smothered in blankets, and dosed like an old salt with Timothy’s rum. It is little wonder that I became almost angry at their solicitude. “Why do you do all this, Joan?” I asked her, when half an hour of it had passed. “Am I a child to be petted and spoiled because its pinafore is wet? Tell Captain Larry that I am coming up to the bridge. You cannot suppose that I shall be content to lie here now. Tell him I am coming up at once. It is nonsense to make such a fuss.” Joan shook her head as though, thus early, she had come to despair of me. “Only a man would talk like that,” she exclaimed, and then—“only a man would be so ungrateful.” “I demur to the charge. You set a great crowd of bullies on me to hold me down by violence, and then talk of ingratitude! Do you not see, my dear girl, that I must know what is going on? How can I lie here when there is so much uncertainty—when so many things may happen? Please do as I tell you, and let Captain Larry know at once.” She came and stood by my bedside, and touching my fingers for an instant with her own—a gesture which thrilled me as though some strange current of a new life burned in my veins—she said very quietly:— “There is nothing happening, Dr. Ean. If you went up to the bridge, you would see nothing but the fog. That is what Mr. McShanus is looking at now—at the fog and the punch bowl. We cannot see the others—we shall never see them again, I hope.” It was calmly said, and yet what a tale of woe it voiced: days of her own agony among the ruffians, intolerable hours of suffering and distress! I thought her then one of the bravest of women—I think so to this hour. “Joan,” I said, “how did you come here? Where did Okyada find you? I have thought much about it, and I believe that I know. But you must tell me yourself. You hid in one of the boats, did you not—one of the three boats the men lowered when they wished me to go on board this yacht. I thought it must be so. There was no other way.” She had seated herself by this time in a girlish attitude at the foot of my bunk, her feet swinging together as though to express a sense of her indifference; her hands clasped, her eyes avoiding mine as though she feared I would read the whole truth therein.