“Do seamen, then, love their calling with so devoted an affection?” demanded Gertrude, in a haste that she might have found embarrassing to explain.

“It is a folly of which we are often accused,” rejoined Wilder, turning his eye on the speaker, and smiling in a manner that had lost every shade of reserve.

“And justly?”

“I fear, justly.”

“Ay!” exclaimed Mrs Wyllys, with an emphasis that was remarkable for the tone of soft and yet bitter regret with which it was uttered; “often better than their quiet and peaceful homes!”

Gertrude pursued the idea no further; but her line full eye fell upon the deck, as though she reflected deeply on a perversity of taste which could render man so insensible to domestic pleasures, and incline him to court the wild dangers of the ocean.

“I, at least, am free from the latter charge,” exclaimed Wilder:  “To me a ship has always been a home.”

“And much of my life, too, has been wasted in one,” continued the governess, who evidently was pursuing, in the recesses of her own mind, some images of a time long past.  “Happy and miserable alike, have been the hours that I have passed upon the sea!  Nor is this the first King’s ship in which it has been my fortune to be thrown.  And yet the customs seem changed since those days I mention, or else memory is beginning to lose some of the impressions of an age when memory is apt to be most tenacious.  Is it usual, Mr Wilder, to admit an utter stranger, like yourself, to exercise authority in a vessel of war?”

“Certainly not.”

“And yet have you been acting, as far as my weak judgment teaches, as second here, since the moment we entered this vessel, wrecked and helpless fugitives from the waves.”

Our adventurer again averted his eye, and evidently searched for words, ere he replied,—­

“A commission is always respected:  Mine procured for me the consideration you have witnessed.”

“You are then an officer of the Crown?”

“Would any other authority be respected in a vessel of the Crown?  Death had left a vacancy in the second station of this—­cruiser.  Fortunately for the wants of the service, perhaps for myself, I was at hand to fill it.”

“But, tell me farther,” continued the governess, who appeared disposed to profit by the occasion to solve more doubts than one, “is it usual for the officers of a vessel of war to appear armed among their crew, in the manner I see here?”

“It is the pleasure of our Commander.”

“That Commander is evidently a skilful seaman, but one whose caprices and tastes are as extraordinary as I find his mien.  I have surely seen him before; and, it would seem, but lately.”