Mr. Vanderholt's face was crimson with the sea. He certainly looked extremely well; so, too, did his daughter. The sun had caught her, spite of a diligent use of her parasol and swift flights from his scorching eye to the shelter of the awning. It had delicately spangled the fair flesh of her face with some golden freckles, which somehow gave an archness to her looks, and a whiter flash to her teeth, when the play of her lips exposed them. This fifth day following the meeting with the _Wife's Hope_ had glowed through a cloudless splendour of sky into a glorious sunset, and a promise of cool heavens, full of rich stars, with the Southern Cross-- 'Memorial reverenced by a thousand storms'-- low down over the jib-boom end. Mr. Vanderholt came on deck when the sun was gone, though all the west was swimming in the fast waning crimson. A number of stars sparkled in the east. Mr. Vanderholt looked at them with delight, for they reminded him of the twinkling of the sky in windy summer trees. A pleasant air of wind was blowing. Now that the sun was gone, the breeze seemed to fan over the bulwark-rail with the fragrance of a land of flowers. It was a sweetness that made you think of the Arabian gale of the poet, but the African land was leagues and leagues distant, and that sweet breath, therefore, was old Ocean's own. The schooner, with every stitch upon her, saving the foretopmast studding-sail, to the setting of which Mr. Vanderholt had an objection, glided through the gathering dusk to the music of broken waters. Miss Vanderholt sat in the cabin, under the lamp. She was reading, and appeared to be interested. Mr. Vanderholt filled his pipe from a pouch whose size corresponded with the bowl it was to feed, and whilst he did this he looked about him. Glew stood between him and the lingering scarlet, and his body, black as indigo, rose and fell. What was the matter? It seemed to Mr. Vanderholt that an unnatural stillness was in the little vessel. He still preserved the forecastle faculties, and carried the eye, whilst he could bend the ear, of a sailor. Eight bells had been struck. The second dog-watch was therefore over. The watch below would, or would not, have gone to bed. All this Mr. Vanderholt knew; but so bright, flushed, and sweet a night, after the roasting and blinding glories of the day, might well prove a temptation to the hands whose turn it was to take rest till midnight to linger to converse and suck out yet another pipe of tobacco. But the silence forward was so deep that Vanderholt, hearkening with his forefinger pressed upon his bowl of unlighted tobacco, thought it ominous. At intervals somebody away in the bows would speak. The voice was a growl, and it would be answered by a growl, and it seemed to the owner of the _Mowbray_ that, whoever it might be that broke the silence in his little ship, made utterance with the throat of a sleeping mastiff.