She ascended from the cabin, and stepped out upon deck, and, as if moving as far as possible from the harsh voices forward, came aft and stood near the wheel.  And at the first glance, I knew that foc’sle report of the lady was not overdrawn, that the most glowing description did ill justice to her loveliness.

Her age?  Oh, twenty-four, perhaps.  Beautiful?  Aye, judged by any standard.  But it was not her youth, or the trimness of her figure, or the mere physical beauty of her features that touched the hearts, and made reverent the voices of rude sailormen.  No; it was something beyond, something greater, than the flesh that commanded our homage.

Once since have I seen a face that was like the face of Captain Swope’s wife—­in a great church in a Latin country.  It was a painting of the Madonna, and the master who had painted it had given the Mother’s face an expression of brooding tenderness as deep as the sea, an expression of pity and sympathy as wide as the world.  You felt, as you looked at the picture, that the artist must have known life, its sufferings and sins.

It was a like expression in the face of the Captain’s lady.  She was no pretty lass whose sweet innocence is merely ignorance.  She was a woman who had looked upon life; you felt that she had faced the black evil and hideous cruelty in a man’s world, and that she understood, and forgave.  You felt her soul had passed through a fierce, white heat of pain, and had emerged burned clean of dross, free of all petty rancor or hatred.  It glowed in her face, this wide understanding and sympathy, looked from her eyes, and sounded in her voice, and it was this that won the worship of the desperate men and broken derelicts who peopled the Golden Bough’s forecastle.

Hair?  Oh, yes, she had hair, a great mass of it piled on her head, black hair.  Eyes?  Her eyes were blue, not the washed out blue of a morning sky, but the changing, mysterious purple-blue of deep water.  She turned those wonderful eyes upon me, as I stood there at the wheel, and the red blood flushed my cheeks, while the mask of cynical hardness I had striven so hard to cultivate fled from my face.  She saw through my pretence, did the lady, she saw me as I really was, a boy playing desperately at being such a man as my experience had taught me to admire.  I was abashed.  I was no longer a hard case with those pitying, understanding eyes upon me.  I was like a lad detected in a mischief, facing my mother.

She had heard some talk in the cabin, or perhaps she had overheard Lynch’s report to the Old Man, for her words showed she knew me as one of the men who had shipped in the vessel of my own will.  “Why—­you are only a boy!” she said, in a surprised voice.  Then her face seemed to diffuse a sweet sympathy and understanding.  I can’t explain it, but I knew that the lady knew just why I had shipped.  She looked inside of me, and read my heart—­and understood!  “Oh, Boy, why did you do it?” she exclaimed softly.  “It is not worth it—­why did you come!  Listen!—­do not give offense; whatever they do, show no resentment.  Oh, they are hard—­forget your pride, and be willing!”