"They are past telling all this now," said the doctor, smiling, and patting Rose's hand; "by to-morrow evening, perhaps, we shall learn all."
"I do long so to hear their story—how terrible it must be—quite a nautical romance; and then, the other poor men of their ship, who have been drowned!"
"Yes, Rose," said Ethel, glancing at the captain and mate, who were each making an entry in his log or journal, "this incident will fill up an entire page of your diary."
"How—why?" asked Rose, reddening very perceptibly.
"For Lucy Page's perusal," said Ethel, with a smile that had a little mischief, or waggery, in it.
Rose grew redder, for her diary or journal of the voyage, which she had begun to keep (from the day she left Laurel Lodge), for the special perusal of her friend and gossip, Lucy Page, had proved rather a bore, and had been completely relinquished, as she could not consistently omit, and yet shrank from recording, memoranda of a certain little interview with the doctor, being naturally restrained therefrom by a certain awkwardness, if the eye of Jack Page, now almost a myth to her, as he has been, perhaps, to the reader, should peruse them also.
So Rose had ceased altogether to continue that interesting volume, which, we may presume, terminated abruptly on that night recorded in a previous chapter, when she and the doctor took a turn on deck to view the stars.
At this moment Cramply Hawkshaw entered the cabin with an expression of face so scared, so altered, and so unmistakably wretched, that Ethel surveyed him with surprise; and then, with some commiseration, she kindly inquired if he was ill?
He complained of giddiness, and abruptly hastened on deck.
In fact, our ex-Texan officer had just come from between decks, where he had been visiting the doctor's patients.