"From what you have told me, I assume you have no mother," Calamity went on. The note of pity had left his voice, and his manner, if not brusque, was cold and judicial.
"No," answered the girl, "my mother died when I was four years old." Her manner, too, had changed; all the heat and defiance had left it and she spoke in a subdued, colourless voice, as though these matters hardly concerned her.
"And you have no relatives living?"
"I have a couple of aunts in Sunderland. I stayed with them until I was eight years old. I—I hate them!" She made a passionate gesture as though the very mention of these people aroused bitter memories. "It was not that they were unkind exactly; but—well, it doesn't matter now. Soon after my eighth birthday my father took me away with him on a voyage to the East, and after that I went with him on nearly all his voyages. He educated me, too; taught me French, mathematics, navigation, and so on."
"Navigation, eh?" remarked Calamity with a note of surprise in his voice.
"Yes; if I had been a man I could have passed for mate and got my master's ticket long ago. I'd pit my knowledge of seamanship against that of any man on this ship," she concluded defiantly.
"That wouldn't be a very hard test," answered the Captain with a cynical smile. "But what did your father intend you to be; surely he didn't suppose you would eventually command a ship?"
"I don't know what his intentions were; but the trip before this last one, he bought a fruit farm near Los Angeles, California, and I think he meant to settle down there when he retired from the sea."
"Probably he thought it might provide you with an occupation."
"Perhaps so; but he never spoke of it."