"If ye please, mem, I will tek the tiller until we get round the Ross. The rocks are very bad here."
"All right, John," says the young lady; and then, with much cautious clinging to various objects, she goes below, saying that she means to do a little more to a certain slight water-colour sketch of Polterriv. We know why she wants to put some further work on that hasty production. Yesterday the Laird expressed high approval of the sketch. She means him to take it with him to Denny-mains, when she leaves for London.
But this heavy sea: how is the artist getting on with her work amid such pitching and diving? Now that we are round the Ross, the White Dove has shifted her course; the wind is more on her beam; the mainsheet has been hauled in; and the noble ship goes ploughing along in splendid style; but how about water-colour drawing?
Suddenly, as the yacht gives a heavy lurch to leeward, an awful sound is heard below. Queen T. clambers down the companion, and holds on by the door of the saloon; the others following and looking over her shoulders. There a fearful scene appears. At the head of the table, in the regal recess usually occupied by the carver and chief president of our banquets, sits Mary Avon, in mute and blank despair. Everything has disappeared from before her. A tumbler rolls backwards and forwards on the floor, empty. A dishevelled bundle of paper, hanging on to the edge of a carpet-stool, represents what was once an orderly sketch-book. Tubes, pencils, saucers, sponges—all have gone with the table-cloth. And the artist sits quite hopeless and silent, staring before her like a maniac in a cell.
"Whatever have you been and done?" calls her hostess.
There is no answer: only that tragic despair.
"It was all bad steering," remarks the Youth. "I knew it would happen as soon as Miss Avon left the helm."
But the Laird, not confining his sympathy to words, presses by his hostess; and, holding hard by the bare table, staggers along to the scene of the wreck. The others timidly follow. One by one the various objects are rescued, and placed for safety on the couch on the leeward side of the saloon. Then the automaton in the presidential chair begins to move. She recovers her powers of speech. She says—awaking from her dream—
"Is my head on?"
"And if it is, it is not of much use to you," says her hostess, angrily. "Whatever made you have those things out in a sea like this? Come up on deck at once; and let Fred get luncheon ready."