“Is there any danger?” asked one of the ladies.

“Well, I cannot say positively there will be no danger,” answered the captain; “there’s not danger enough to keep me and the crew in port; but it will be a very dirty night in the Channel.  If there’s no actual necessity for crossing to-night I should advise you to wait, and see how it will be to-morrow.  Of course we shall use extra caution, and all that sort of thing.  No; I cannot say I expect any great danger.”

“But it will be awfully rough?” said the gentleman.

The captain answered only by a sound between a groan and a whistle, as if he could not trust himself to think of words that would describe the roughness.  There could be no doubt of his meaning.  The ladies hastily determined to drive back to their hotel, and gathered up their small packages and wrappings quickly.  I fancied they were regarding me somewhat curiously, but I kept my face away from them carefully.  They could only see my seal-skin jacket and hat, and my rough hair; and they did not speak to me.

“You are going to venture, miss?” said the captain, stepping into the cabin as the ladies retreated up the steps.

“Oh, yes,” I answered.  “I am obliged to go, and I am not in the least afraid.”

“You needn’t be,” he replied, in a hearty voice.  “We shall do our best, for our own sakes, and you would be our first care if there was any mishap.  Women and children first always.  I will send the stewardess to you; she goes, of course.”

I sat down on one of the couches, listening for a few minutes to the noises about me.  The masts were groaning, and the planks creaking under the heavy tramp of the sailors, as they got ready to start, with shrill cries to one another.  Then the steam-engine began to throb like a pulse through all the vessel from stem to stern.  Presently the stewardess came down, and recommended me to lie down in my berth at once, which I did very obediently, but silently, for I did not wish to enter into conversation with the woman, who seemed inclined to be talkative.  She covered me up well with several blankets, and there I lay with my face turned from the light of the swinging lamp, and scarcely moved hand or foot throughout the dismal and stormy night.

For it was very stormy and dismal as soon as we were out of Southampton waters, and in the rush and swirl of the Channel.  I did not fall asleep for an instant.  I do not suppose I should have slept had the Channel been, as it is sometimes, smooth as a mill-pond, and there had been no clamorous hissing and booming of waves against the frail planks, which I could touch with my hand.  I could see nothing of the storm, but I could hear it:  and the boat seemed tossed, like a mere cockle-shell, to and fro upon the rough sea.  It did not alarm me so much as it distracted my thoughts, and kept them from dwelling upon possibilities far more perilous to me than the danger of death by shipwreck.  A short suffering such a death would be.