“Certainly,” answered Mr. Brent; “I’m bound for the barbecue.”  And he gave a command.

While the two great boats were manoeuvring, and slashing with one wheel and the other, the gongs sounding, Virginia ran into the cabin.

“Oh, Aunt Lillian,” she exclaimed, “here is Captain Lige and the Juanita, and he is going to take us back with him.  He says there is no danger.”

It its unnecessary here to repeat the moral persuasion which Virginia used to get her aunt up and dressed.  That lady, when she had heard the whistle and the gongs, had let her imagination loose.  Turning her face to the wall, she was in the act of repeating her prayers as her niece entered.

A big stevedore carried her down two decks to where the gang-plank was thrown across.  Captain Lige himself was at the other end.  His face lighted, Pushing the people aside, he rushed across, snatched the lady from the negro’s arms, crying: 

“Jinny!  Jinny Carvel!  Well, if this ain’t fortunate.”  The stevedore’s services were required for Mammy Easter.  And behind the burly shield thus formed, a stoutish gentleman slipped over, all unnoticed, with a carpet-bag in his hand It bore the initials E. H.

The plank was drawn in.  The great wheels began to turn and hiss, the Barbara’s passengers waved good-by to the foolhardy lunatics who had elected to go back into the jaws of destruction.  Mrs. Colfax was put into a cabin; and Virginia, in a glow, climbed with Captain Lige to the hurricane deck.  There they stood for a while in silence, watching the broad stern of the Barbara growing smaller.  “Just to think,” Miss Carvel remarked, with a little hysterical sigh, “just to think that some of those people brought bronze clocks instead of tooth-brushes.”

“And what did you bring, my girl?” asked the Captain, glancing at the parcel she held so tightly under her arm.

He never knew why she blushed so furiously.

CHAPTER XXII

THE STRAINING OF ANOTHER FRIENDSHIP

Captain Lige asked but two questions:  where was the Colonel, and was it true that Clarence had refused to be paroled?  Though not possessing over-fine susceptibilities, the Captain knew a mud-drum from a lady’s watch, as he himself said.  In his solicitude for Virginia, he saw that she was in no state of mind to talk of the occurrences of the last few days.  So he helped her to climb the little stair that winds to the top of the texas,—­that sanctified roof where the pilot-house squats.  The girl clung to her bonnet Will you like her any the less when you know that it was a shovel bonnet, with long red ribbons that tied under her chin?  It became her wonderfully.  “Captain Lige,” she said, almost tearfully, as she took his arm, “how I thank heaven that you came up the river this afternoon!”

“Jinny,” said the Captain, “did you ever know why cabins are called staterooms?”