“Oh no, no.”

“Are you alarmed still?”

“Oh, no; I have such faith in you.”

“Then go to sleep again, like a lamb.”

“I will; then I shall not tease you with my conversation.”

“Now there is a way to put it.”

“Forgive me.”

“That I will, if you will take some repose.  There, I will lash you to my arm with this handkerchief; then you can lie the other way, and hold on by the handkerchief—­there.”

She closed her eyes and fell apparently to sleep, but really to thinking.

Then David nudged Jack, and waked him.  “Speak low now, Jack.”

“What is it, sir?”

“Land ahead.”

Jack looked out, and there was a mountain of jet rising out of the sea, and, to a landsman’s eye, within a stone’s throw of them.

“Is it the French coast, sir?  I must have been asleep.”

“French coast? no, Channel Island—­smallest of the lot.”

“Better give it a wide berth, sir.  We shall go smash like a teacup if we run on to one of them rocky islands.”

“Why, Jack,” said David, reproachfully, “am I the man to run upon a leeshore, and such a night as this?”

“Not likely.  You will keep her head for Cherbourg or St. Malo, sir; it is our only chance.”

“It is not our only chance, nor our best.  We have been running a little ahead of this gale, Jack; there is worse in store for us; the sea is rolling mountains high on the French coast this morning, I know.  We are like enough to be pooped before we get there, or swamped on some harbor-bar at last.”

“Well, sir, we must take our chance.”

“Take our chance?  What! with heads on our shoulders, and an angel on board that Heaven has given us charge of?  No, I sha’n’t take my chance.  I shall try all I know, and hang on to life by my eyelids.  Listen to me.  ‘Knowledge is gold;’ a little of it goes a long way.  I don’t know much myself, but I do know the soundings of the British Channel.  I have made them my study.  On the south side of this rocky point there is forty fathoms water close to the shore, and good anchorage-ground.”

“Then I wish we could jump over the thundering island, and drop on the lee side of it; but, as we can’t, what’s the use?”

“We may be able to round the point.”

“There will be an awful sea running off that point, sir.”

“Of course there will.  I mean to try it, for all that.”

“So be it, sir; that is what I like to hear.  I hate palaver.  Let one give his orders, and the rest obey them.  We are not above half a mile from it now.”

“You had better wake the landsman.  We must have a third hand for this.”

“No,” said a woman’s voice, sweet, but clear and unwavering.  “I shall be the third hand.”

“Curse it,” cried David, “she has heard us.”

“Every word.  And I have no confidence in Mr. Talboys; and, believe me, I am more to be trusted than he is.  See, my cowardice is all worn out.  Do but trust me, and you shall find I want neither courage nor intelligence.”