Shiela came below to see me.  The traces of tears were in her eyes.

“It’s a large ship to the northward,” she said.  “From something Captain Blaise whispered to father it may be a man-o’-war, though I hope not.  But what have you done since I’ve been gone?  You mustn’t feel put out when I have to go on deck.  It’s an ungrateful girl, you know, who is not courteous to her host, especially when that host is Captain Blaise.  Think what father and I owe him!  And what a wonderfully interesting man he is!  And what adventures he has had!”

“But what made you cry?”

“Captain Blaise was telling of a happening on this very spot almost.  It was a ship from Cadiz for Savannah.  She had taken fire.  He picked up among others three people lashed to some pieces of wreckage—­a man, a woman, and their baby.  She was dead and he dying.  He did die later aboard his ship, the predecessor of the Bess.  The baby lived.  Do you recall the story?”

“No, he never told me that one.  And the baby?”

“The father had practically supported the baby in the water for four days—­the baby was less than a year old—­and the mother had nursed him till she died.  For two days, the man said, with nothing to eat herself.  She and he, they had practically killed themselves for the baby boy.  She was a Spanish woman—­a lady.  The father died aboard Captain Blaise’s ship.  He was an American who had married abroad without consulting his father, and the old gentleman made such a fuss about it that the young man had stayed away—­intended to remain away and renounce his heritage; but at last the father had sent for him, and he was then on his way home.  But you should have heard Captain Blaise tell it.  He made us feel that mother’s love for her baby, that mother who was dead before he picked her up, and made us feel, too, what a man the father was.  What an actor he is!  I tried not to cry, but I did.  But let me see—­what have you there?”

I showed her some things.  She picked up the nearest and read it aloud: 

  “I was walking down the glen—­
      O my heart!—­on a summer’s day. 
    He passed me by, my gentleman—­
      Would I had never seen the day!

  “True love can neither hate nor scorn,
      And ne’er will true love pass away. 
    And his hair was silk as tasselled corn,
      My heart alack—­that summer’s day!

  “Oh, he wore plumes in his broad hat
      And jewelled buckles on his shoon,
    And O, the sparkle in his eye! 
      And yet his love could die so soon!”

“H-m.  Suggests satin breeches and hair-powder, men who could navigate a ball-room floor more safely than the Trades, doesn’t it?  Wherever did you get such notions?”

I showed her a volume, one of Captain Blaise’s, an anthology of the Elizabethan and Restoration poets.  “I was trying to write like one of ’em,” I explained.  “And I thought it was pretty good.”