She looked up at the sky-light.  There were the legs of the two gentlemen and the skirts of her aunt visible (and stationary) on the lee side of the deck.  She advanced a few steps and listened.  There was a pause in the murmur of the voices above.  She looked up again.  One pair of legs (not her father’s) had disappeared.  Without an instant’s hesitation, Natalie darted back to her own door, just in time to escape Richard Turlington descending the cabin stairs.  All he did was to go to one of the drawers under the main-cabin book-case and to take out a map, ascending again immediately to the deck.  Natalie’s guilty conscience rushed instantly, nevertheless, to the conclusion that Richard suspected her.  When she showed herself for the second time, instead of venturing into the cabin, she called across it in a whisper,

“Launce!”

Launce appeared at his door.  He was peremptorily checked before he could cross the threshold.

“Don’t stir a step!  Richard has been down in the cabin!  Richard suspects us!”

“Nonsense!  Come out.”

“Nothing will induce me, unless you can find some other place than the cabin.”

Some other place?  How easy to find it on land!  How apparently impossible at sea!  There was the forecastle (full of men) at one end of the vessel.  There was the sail room (full of sails) at the other.  There was the ladies’ cabin (used as the ladies’ dressing-room; inaccessible, in that capacity, to every male human being on board).  Was there any disposable inclosed space to be found amidships?  On one side there were the sleeping berths of the sailing-master and his mate (impossible to borrow them).  On the other side was the steward’s store-room.  Launce considered for a moment.  The steward’s store-room was just the thing!

“Where are you going?” asked Natalie, as her lover made straight for a closed door at the lower extremity of the main cabin.

“To speak to the steward, darling.  Wait one moment, and you will see me again.”

Launce opened the store-room door, and discovered, not the steward, but his wife, who occupied the situation of stewardess on board the vessel.  The accident was, in this case, a lucky one.  Having stolen several kisses at sea, and having been discovered (in every case) either by the steward or his wife, Launce felt no difficulty in prefacing his request to be allowed the use of the room by the plainest allusion to his relations with Natalie.  He could count on the silence of the sympathizing authorities in this region of the vessel, having wisely secured them as accomplices by the usual persuasion of the pecuniary sort.  Of the two, however, the stewardess, as a woman, was the more likely to lend a ready ear to Launce’s entreaties in his present emergency.  After a faint show of resistance, she consented, not only to leave the room, but to keep her husband out of it, on the understanding that it was not to be