“Yes,” said Dalton, spreading his note-book on his knee.
“Well,” resumed the captain, “after makin’ all the usual arrangements for all expenses—funeral, etcetera, (of which there’ll be none if I go to the bottom), an’ some legacies of which I’ll tell the lawyer when I see him, I leave all that remains to Miss Jessie and Miss Kate Seaward, share an’ share alike, to do with it as they please, an’ to leave it after them to whomsoever they like. There!”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, that’s all,” returned the captain, sadly. “I once had a dear sister, but every effort I have made to find her out has failed. Of course if I do come across her before it pleases the Lord to take me home, I’ll alter the will. In the meantime let it be drawn out so.”
Soon after this important transaction was finished the ladies returned, much flushed and excited, and full of apologies for their rude behaviour to their male friends.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
Out with the Short Blue again.
Pleasant and heart-stirring is the sensation of returning health to one who has sailed for many weeks in the “Doldrums” of Disease, weathered Point Danger, crossed the Line of Weakness, and begun to steer with favouring gales over the smooth sea of Convalescence.