Mistress Bertram ascended quickly and steadily, holding the baby in her arms. The other made some demur, lingering at the foot of the ladder and looking up as if afraid, until her companion chid her sharply. Then she too went up, but as she passed me--I was holding one side of the ladder steady--she shot at me from under her hood a look which disturbed me strangely. It was the first time I had seen her face, and it was such a face as a man rarely forgets. Not because of its beauty; rather because it was a speaking face, a strange and expressive one, which the dark waving hair, swelling in thick clusters upon either temple, seemed to accentuate. The features were regular, but, the full red lips excepted, rather thin than shapely. The nose, too, was prominent. But the eyes! The eyes seemed to glorify the dark brilliant thinness of the face, and to print it upon the memory. They were dark flashing eyes, and their smile seemed to me perpetually to challenge, to allure and repulse, and even to goad. Sometimes they were gay, more rarely sad, sometimes soft, and again hard as steel. They changed in a moment as one or another approached her. But always at their gayest, there was a suspicion of weariness and fatigue in their depths. Or so I thought later. Something of this flashed through my mind as I followed her up the side. But once on board I glanced round, forgetting her in the novelty of my position. The _Whelp_ was decked fore and aft only, the blackness of the hold gaping amidships, spanned by a narrow gangway, which served to connect the two decks. We found ourselves in the forepart, amid coils of rope and windlasses and water-casks; surrounded by half a dozen wild-looking sailors wearing blue knitted frocks and carrying sheath-knives at their girdles. The foremost and biggest of these seemed to be the captain, although, so far as outward appearances went, the only difference between him and his crew lay in a marlin-spike which he wore slung to a thong beside his knife. When I reached the deck he was telling a long story to Mistress Bertram, and telling it very slowly. But the drift of it I soon gathered. While the fog lasted he could not put to sea. "Nonsense!" cried my masterful companion, chafing at his slowness of speech. "Why not? Would it be dangerous?" "Well, madam, it would be dangerous," he answered, more slowly than ever. "Yes, it would be dangerous. And to put to sea in a fog? That is not seamanship. And your baggage has not arrived." "Never mind my baggage!" she answered imperiously. "I have made other arrangements for it. Two or three things I know came on board last night. I want to start--to start at once, do you hear?"