"Yes, sir," I replied. "The steward was in the habit of serving out the ship's stores to the crew of the Grosvenor. He rather sided with the captain, and tried to make the best of what was outrageously bad. When the men mutinied they threatened to hang him if he touched any portion of the cuddy stores, and I dare say they would have executed their threat. He was rather a coward before he lost his reason, and the threat affected him violently. I myself never could induce him to taste any other food than the ship's rotten stores whilst the men remained in the vessel, and I dare say the memory of the threat still lives in his broken mind."
"Thanks for your explanation," said the doctor, "I shall sleep the better for it; for, upon my word, the man's unnatural dislike of good food—of entrées, man, and curried fowl and roast goose, for I tried him myself—has kept me awake bothering my head to understand."
"May I ask what vessel this is?" I said, addressing Captain Craik.
"The Peri, of Glasgow, homeward-bound from Jamaica," he answered.
"I know the ship now, sir. She belongs to the —— Line."
"Quite right. We shall hope to put you ashore in seven days hence. It is curious that I should have known Mr. Robertson, your lady's father. I called upon him a few years since in Liverpool, on business, and had a long conversation with him. Little could I have dreamt that his end would be so sad, and that it should be reserved for me to rescue his daughter from an open boat, in mid-Atlantic!"
"Ah, sir," I exclaimed, "no one but I can ever know the terrible trials this poor girl has passed through. She has been twice shipwrecked within three weeks; she has experienced all the horrors of a mutiny; she has lost her father under circumstances which would have killed many girls with grief; she has been held in terror of her life, and yet never once has her noble courage flagged, her splendid spirit failed her."
"Yes," answered Captain Craik, "I have read her character in her story and in her way of relating it. You are to be congratulated on having won the love of a woman whose respect alone would do a man honour."
"He deserves what he has got," said the doctor, laughing. "Findings keepings."
"I did find her and I mean to keep her," I exclaimed.