“You are just bricks!” cried Malcom, with a joyous look.  “No more seasickness!  Now we will have jolly times, just so soon as Madge can come up.”

“Go down and persuade her, Malcom, after you have told the deck-steward to bring some breakfast for these girls.  I will help her dress, and you can bring her up in your arms if she is too weak to walk.”

Before noon, Margery, looking frail as a crushed white lily, lay on a chair heaped with cushions and rugs close beside her mother; and the sweet salt air and sunshine did their best to atone for the misery that had been inflicted by the turbulent sea.

Bright, happy days followed, and sunsets and moonlight evenings, and the girls learned to love sea life.  They roamed over every part of the ship.  The good captain always had a smile and welcome for young people, and told them many things about the management of vessels at sea.

There was no monotony, but every day seemed full of interest.  All the wonders of the great deep were about them—­strange fish, sea porpoise, and whales, by day, and ever-new phosphorescent gleams and starry heavens by night.  Then the wonderful interest of a sail at sea, or a distant steamship; some other humanity than that on their own ship passing them on the limitless ocean!

On the sixth day out the ship passed between Flores and Corvo, two of the northernmost islands of the Azores; and, through the glass, they could easily see the little Portuguese homes—­almost the very people—­scattered on the sloping hill-sides.

After two days more, the long line of the distant shore of Cape St. Vincent came into view, and Malcom, fresh from his history lesson, recalled the the fact that nearly a hundred years ago, a great Spanish fleet had been destroyed by the English under Admiral Nelson a little to the eastward on these very waters.

The next morning was a momentous one.  In the early sunshine the ship entered the Bay of Gibraltar and anchored for several hours.  Boats took the passengers to visit the town, and to Barbara and Bettina the supreme moment of travel in a foreign country had arrived; that in which they found another land and first touched it with their feet; and entering the streets found strange people and listened to a foreign tongue.

They drove through the queer, narrow, crooked streets, out upon the “neutral ground,” and up to the gardens; bought an English newspaper; then, going back to the ship, looked up at the frowning rock threaded by those English galleries, which, upon occasion, can pour forth from their windows such a deadly hail.

Leaving the harbor, the ship passed slowly along between the “Pillars of Hercules,” for so many centuries the western limit of the Old World, and entered the blue Mediterranean.  And was this low dark line on the right really Africa, the Dark Continent, which until then had seemed only a dream—­a far-away dream?  What a sure reality it would ever be after this!