"What do you think of the young lady's idea? I should like to earn a hundred pounds." "So should I," he answered gruffly, pausing. "It would pretty well pay me for what I have had to put up with from Coxon." He gave me an indescribable look, full of fierceness, suspicion, and cunning. "I dessay it would, if you got it," he said, and walked out, banging the door after him. CHAPTER III. I had been greatly struck by the firmness with which Miss Robertson had received the ghastly bit of information I gave her, and not more by this than by her gentle and genial manner towards the carpenter, wherein she had shown herself perfectly well qualified to act with me in this critical, dangerous time. She had only just been rescued from one trial frightful enough in character to have driven one, at least, of the male sufferers mad; and now fate had plunged her into a worse situation, and yet she could confront the terrors of it calmly, and deliberate collectedly upon the danger. Such a character as this was, I thought, of the true type of heroine, with nothing in it that was strained; calm in emergency, and with a fruitful mind scattering hope around it--even though no more than hope--as the teeming flower sheds its perfume. I had especially noticed the quickness with which she had conceived and expressed that idea about her father rewarding the men; it inspirited me, in spite of the reception Stevens had given it. One hundred pounds a man was a promise that might move them into a very different train of thought from what Stevens had induced and was sustaining. Having heard the carpenter enter his cabin, I determined to step on deck and take the boatswain's sense on this new idea. But before quitting the cuddy, I knocked lightly on Miss Robertson's cabin door. She opened it instantly. "Will you come on deck?" I asked her. "Yes, if I can be of use there." "The air will refresh you after your confinement to this cabin, and will do your father good." "He is sleeping now," she answered, opening the door fully, that I might see the old man. "Let him sleep," said I; "that will do him more good. But you will come?" "Yes, with pleasure." "You have nothing to fear from the men," I said, wishing to reassure her. "They are willing to acknowledge the authority of the persons they have put over them--the bo'sun, Stevens, and myself." "I should not mind if they spoke to me," she exclaimed. "I should know what to say to them, unless they were brutal." She suddenly added, putting her hand to her head, and almost laughing-- "I have no hat." "I have a straw hat you shall have," I said, and brought it. She put it on her head, and it sat very well on the pile of yellow hair that lay heaped over her comb.