Though most of the crew of the “Dolphin” slept, either in their hammocks or among the guns, there were bright and anxious eyes still open in a different part of the vessel. The Rover had relinquished his cabin to Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude, from the moment they entered the ship; and we shall shift the scene to that apartment, (already sufficiently described to render the reader familiar with the objects it contained), resuming the action of the tale at an early part of the discourse just related in the preceding chapter. It will not be necessary to dwell upon the feelings with which the female inmates of the vessel had witnessed the disturbances of that day; the conjectures and suspicions to which they gave rise may be apparent in what is about to follow. A mild, soft light fell from the lamp of wrought and massive silver that was suspended from the upper deck, obliquely upon the painfully pensive countenance of the governess, while a few of its strongest rays lighted the youthful bloom, though less expressive because less meditative lineaments, of her companion. The background was occupied, like a dark shadow in a picture, by the dusky form of the slumbering Cassandra. At the moment when we see fit to lift the curtain on this quiet scene of our drama, the pupil was speaking, seeking, in the averted eyes of her instructress, that answer to her question which the tongue of the latter appeared reluctant to accord. “I repeat, my dearest Madam,” said Gertrude, “that the fashion of these ornaments, no less than their materials, is extraordinary in a ship.” “And what would you infer from the same?” “I know not. Still I would that we were safe in the house of my father.” “God grant it! It may be imprudent to be longer silent.—Gertrude, frightful, horrible suspicions have been engendered in my mind by what we have this day witnessed.” The cheek of the maiden blanched, and the pupil of her soft eye contracted, with alarm, while she seemed to demand an explanation with every disturbed lineament of her countenance. “I have long been familiar with the usages of a vessel of war,” continued the governess, who had only paused in order to review the causes of her suspicions in her own mind; “but never have I seen such customs as, each hour, unfold themselves in this vessel.” “Of what do you suspect her?” The look of deep, engrossing, maternal anxiety, that the lovely interrogator received in reply to this question, might have startled one whose mind had been more accustomed to muse on the depravity of human nature than the spotless being who received it; but to Gertrude it conveyed no more than a general and vague sensation of alarm. “Why do you thus regard me, my governess—my mother?” she exclaimed, bending forward, and laying a hand imploringly on the arm of the other, as if she would arouse her from a trance.