She turned her back suddenly, and I hardly knew whether I had not said too much. I stood watching her for a few moments, with my fingers on the handle of the door. Finding she did not move, I went quietly out, but as I closed the door I heard her sob. Now, what had I said to make her cry? I did not like to go in again, and so I repaired to my cabin, wishing, instead of allowing my conversation to drift into a personal current, I had confined it to my plans, which I had not half unfolded to her, but from which I had been as easily diverted as if they were a bit of fiction instead of a living plot that our lives depended on. During my watch from four to six, Stevens joined me, and asked how "Floridy" would bear from the ship when she was hove to? I told him that Florida was not an island, but part of the main coast of North America, and that he might head the boats any point from N.N.W. to S.S.W. and still, from a distance of fifty or sixty miles, fetch some part of the Florida coast, which I dared say, showed a seaboard ranging four hundred miles long. This seemed new to him, which more than ever convinced me of his ignorance, for though I had repeatedly pointed out Florida to him, yet he did not know but that it was an island, which might easily be missed by steering the boats a point out of the course given. He then asked me what compasses we had that we might take with us. "We shall only want one in the long-boat," I replied; "and there is one on the table in the captain's cabin which will do. Have you got the long-boat all ready?" "Ay, clean as a new brass farden, and provisioned for a month." "Now let me understand; when the ship is hove to you will sling the long-boat over?" "I explained all that before," he answered gruffly. "Not that." "You're hangin' on a tidy bit about them there boats. What do you think?" "I suppose my life is as good as yours, and that I have a right to find out how we are to abandon this ship and make the shore," I answered, with some show of warmth, my object being to get all the information from him that was possible to be drawn. "You'll get the long-boat alongside, and all hands will jump into her? Is that it?" "Why, wot do you think we'd get the boat alongside for if we didn't get into her?" he replied, with a kind of growling laugh. "Will anybody be left on the ship?" "Anybody left on the ship?" he exclaimed, fetching a sudden breath: "Wot's put that in yer head?" "I was afraid that that yellow devil, the cook, might induce you to leave the steward behind to take his chance to sink or swim in her, just out of revenge for calling bad pork good," said I, fixing my eyes upon him. "No, no, nothen of the sort," he replied quickly, and with evident alarm. "Curse the cook! d'ye think I's skipper to give them kind o' orders?"