_He_,
whose influence now ruled her life, had told her that these men were
born mariners, and that she was twenty times safer with them than when
the yacht had been under the control of those honest, grinning
red-whiskered English Jack Tars. But she liked the English sailors best,
all the same; and she shrank from the faintest contact with these
tawny-visaged strangers, plucking away the train of her gown as they
passed her chair, lest they should brush against her drapery.
On deck this morning, with only those dark faces near, she had a sense
of loneliness, of helplessness, of abandonment even. Unbidden the image
of her home at Grasmere flashed into her mind--all things so calm, so
perfectly ordered, such a sense of safety, of home--no peril, no
temptation, no fever--only peace: and she had grown sick to death of
peace. She had prayed for tempest: and the tempest had come.
There was a heavenly quiet in the air in the early summer morning, only
the creaking of a spar, the scream of a seagull now and then. How pale
the lamps were growing on board the yachts.
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