ever danger there may be are not afraid, I do not see why I should. They know the situation. I do not. When they tell me that there is serious danger, it will be time enough for me to be frightened."

Then for the first time Sinclair turned upon her a look of genuine admiration. Up to that moment she had been to him a mischievous, teasing, whimsical girl, with a quick wit and a ready tongue, who had been amusing herself at his expense. Now he saw another side to her character. There was a strong, brave nature under the light, changeful surface humours he had seen before.

If she were not afraid, there was at least one passenger who was. During the brief lull in the storm Clark, the tea-buyer, had come on deck. He had hardly reached it when the second fury of the typhoon burst upon them. He was now clinging to the handrail, with a face so flabby and ghastly that it was terrible to look upon. He was not sea-sick. He was too experienced a sailor for that. But he was afraid, horribly afraid. As the murk and gloom closed down again, and a gigantic wall of water broke over the ship, making her shudder and struggle like a living thing in death agony, Clark's voice was heard rising in a scream above the roar of the elements:

"MacKay, for God's sake, why don't you pray?" MacKay looked at the man clinging there in abject terror. For a moment the keen, stern face softened as if in pity. Then it seemed as if the memory of something was it of that wreck on the East Coast, and the evil deeds done in the chapel and the preacher's house there?-flashed through his mind. His face hardened again, and in a voice like ice he replied:

"Men who honour God when the days are fine do

not have to howl to Him for help in the time of storm."

What more the terror-stricken boaster of the evening before may have said was lost on his companions, for something was happening which engrossed all their attention. Down in the engine-room bells jangled sharply. The screw began to thresh the water at a tremendous rate. The Hailoong heeled still farther to port, began to forge ahead, bumped something, was caught by a mighty wave squarely on the stern, righted herself, and plunged forward. Then Sinclair realized what was happening.

"Everybody below!" he shouted. "Quick! The next will catch us on this side. Dr. MacKay, help Miss MacAllister.”

Seizing the helpless Clark, he flung him by main strength into safety. They were scarcely under cover when a big roller tumbled on board on the port side. The Hailoong had turned almost completely around, and was fighting her way out to sea.

All afternoon and far into the night the brave little vessel battled with the waves to get back to the coast of the mainland. At last her anxious officers were rewarded by a distant, hazy gleam of light through the dense, water-laden atmosphere. Fifteen seconds passed, almost minutes in length. Again the white beam shot athwart the darkness. Then regularly and growing ever nearer, at intervals of fifteen seconds, the great white light flashed, showing the way to safety. It was Turnabout lighthouse, behind which lay Haitan Straits, winding among the islands, and between them and the mainland shore.

Into one of their many natural harbours the Hailoong cautiously felt her way, and cast anchor in

a quiet basin among the hills. There nothing but the torrents of rain falling and the roar of the surf beyond the island barrier remained to tell of the dangers they had passed through. Then Captain Whiteley left the bridge for the first time in more than twenty-four hours. Neither he nor his chief officer had found a chance to sleep for forty-eight hours.

For years afterwards only three persons knew exactly what happened on the bridge that day. Then when Captain Whiteley was commanding a Castle boat running to the Cape, and McLeod had a big transPacific liner, the quarter-master, who with a Chinese sea-cunny had been at the Hailoong's wheel, felt absolved from the promise he had made to McLeod to keep the secret, and told what he knew.

When the momentary lifting of the clouds showed the captain that the wind combined with the ebb of the tide had carried them past the line of entrance to the harbour, towards the shoaling beach on which the surf was beating, he shouted to his mate:

"My God, McLeod, we're lost!"

"Not so bad as that yet, sir!" was the reply.

66 There isn't room to turn and clear that shoal water. To starboard it's stern on: to port it's broadside on.'

66

99

We haven't tried, sir!"

"Then, for God's sake, McLeod, try!"

The words had hardly left the captain's lips when the engineer received the signal for full steam ahead, and the mate, springing into the wheel-house, flung himself on the wheel, and with the combined strength of three men forced it over. The Hailoong responded gallantly. Her head swung directly towards the dreaded shoal, passed it, and pointed out to sea. So

close was she that when the wind caught her stern it dropped just for an instant between two rollers on the hard, smooth sand. But the next one lifted her, gave her churning screw a chance, and the ebb tide, which a moment before had been threatening to send her broadside to destruction, now helped to bear her past the long receding curve of the sand bank, out into the open sea.

"That was the tightest corner I ever was in," Whiteley used to say afterwards; " and it was McLeod who took us out."

But McLeod, in a moment of confidence, said to Sinclair:

"Man, but that engineer, Watson, is the jewel whatever! He let his second handle the levers, while himself held pistols to the heads of the Chinese stokers, and told them to shovel or die in their tracks. That's what saved us. He's a jewel. I never saw his likes whatever."

I

IV

PARRIED

T was a bright, calm summer day, perfect in its tropical splendour, when the Hailoong arrived off

the port of Tamsui. On the blue, smiling sea and rich green shore not a trace remained of the furious storm of two days before. Where, save for one brief gleam, all had been hidden from sight by the blackness of the tempest and the deluge of rain and spray, there now lay before the ship's company as fair a landscape as the eye could wish to look upon.

Immediately in front of them was the broad, brimming river, its sand-spits and oyster-beds hidden beneath the waters of the full tide. On the right or southern shore a mountain rose from its margin in an isolated peak to the height of seventeen hundred feet, clothed with dense verdure to the very summit. To the left, on a hill and plateau two hundred feet high, were the red brick buildings of the old Dutch fort, the residence of the British consul, and the mission schools, and the white bungalows of the missionaries and customs officers. At the foot of this hill and along the river bank, the mean buildings of the Chinese town of Tamsui straggled off until lost to sight around the curve. Its limits were marked by the little forest of masts of the junks which lay along in front of the town. In the centre of the river, directly opposite the mission houses, a trim gunboat rested at anchor. Over all rose the Taitoon Mountains in suc