“Such as the sea-serpent,” added the marine, quickly, “and a great many other monsters who are not in the books, but who have a good time at the bottom of the sea, all the same.  Well, to go on with my story, you must understand that, though this Portuguese spoke broken English, which I haven’t tried to give you, he made himself perfectly plain to all of us, and I can assure you that when he got through talking there was a shaky lot of men on that deck.

“The chief officer said he would go below and see how the captain was getting on, and the crew huddled together in the bow, and began whispering among themselves, as if they were afraid the Water-devil would hear them.  I turned to walk aft, feeling pretty queer, I can tell you, when I saw Miss Minturn just coming up from the cabin below.

“I haven’t said anything about Miss Minturn, but she and her father, who was an elderly English gentleman and an invalid, who had never left his berth since we took him up at Singapore, were our only passengers, except, of course, myself.  She was a beautiful girl, with soft blue eyes and golden hair, and a little pale from constantly staying below to nurse her father.

“Of course I had had little or nothing to say to her, for her father was a good deal of a swell and I was only a marine; but now she saw me standing there by myself, and she came right up to me.  ’Can you tell me, sir,’ she said, ’if anything else has happened?  They are making a great din in the engine-room.  I have been looking out of our port, and the vessel seems to me to be stationary.’  She stopped at that, and waited to hear what I had to say, but I assure you I would have liked to have had her go on talking for half an hour.  Her voice was rich and sweet, like that of so many Englishwomen, although, I am happy to say, a great many of my countrywomen have just as good voices; and when I meet any of them for the first time, I generally give them the credit of talking in soft and musical notes, even though I have not had the pleasure of hearing them speak.”

“Look here,” said the blacksmith, “can’t you skip the girl and get back to the Devil?”

“No,” said the marine, “I couldn’t do that.  The two are mixed together, so to speak, so that I have to tell you of both of them.”

“You don’t mean to say,” exclaimed Mrs. Fryker, speaking for the first time, and by no means in soft and musical tones, “that he swallowed her?”

“I’ll go on with the story,” said the marine; “that’s the best way, and everything will come up in its place.  Now, of course, I wasn’t going to tell this charming young woman, with a sick father, anything about the Water-devil, though what reason to give her for our standing still here I couldn’t imagine; but of course I had to speak, and I said, ’Don’t be alarmed, miss, we have met with an unavoidable detention; that sort of thing often happens in navigation.  I can’t explain it to you, but you see the ship is perfectly safe and sound, and she is merely under sail instead of having her engines going.’