He had been nursed by Lucy from the time of his being slung over the side. The wounds were dressed by her hands. Day after day, hour after hour, she sat beside him in his cabin. She carried his tray of food into his little sea-bedroom, and fed him, or helped him to feed himself. And though at night he was watched by his father, the instructions given were that if the patient expressed a wish for her presence, Lucy was to be summoned, no matter the hour of the night in which the call was made. What could such an association as this end in, but in such a love between the two as must prove irresistible sooner or later as an appeal? Another element of admiration supplied increase of vitality to his passion when he gathered, from her own confession, that she simulated madness to rescue herself from a voyage whose issue threatened lifelong misery to her, and death by the hangman to the other. Captain Acton easily perceived what was happening, and might as easily have guessed what was to come. The Admiral was as perceptive as his friend, and as reserved. Captain Weaver had been sent on board the _Minorca_ to take charge of her; Mr Eagle remained as the barque's first mate, and Captain Acton himself navigated the _Aurora_ to the English Channel. He had overhauled Mr Lawrence's cabin in the _Minorca_ and found the "Secret Instructions" he was supposed to have written, and this paper he would have shown to Sir William Lawrence but for the circumstance of the envelope being sealed with the Acton crest, which signified that Mr Lawrence had taken an opportunity of borrowing a large silver seal which stood upon the library table in Old Harbour House, and replacing it, after using it for a nefarious purpose: Captain Acton had himself used that seal the day before he followed in pursuit in the _Aurora_. The schooner having touched at Falmouth, proceeded to Old Harbour, where her unexpected arrival aroused great excitement, and provoked much wonderment, and started every tongue into a passion of gossip and conjecture. The crew gave the populace the news that the Admiral and his son, Mr Lawrence, had gone ashore at Falmouth, but whether to stop there or whether to make sail from that port to foreign parts, the Jacks were unable to affirm. Captain Acton and Lucy were strictly reserved--in some directions rigidly silent. Even Aunt Caroline, who had looked carefully after the home, and particularly Lucy's little terrier Mamie, and who swooned away in a bundle of flowered gown and hoop at the sight of her niece, was kept in ignorance of many essential features of this story--where it begins when she steps off the stage--for fear that her tongue should betray more truth to outside ears than it was expedient or desirable they should be made acquainted with.