Captain MacWhirr. The steward found in the letter he wrote, in a tidy
chart-room, passages of such absorbing interest that twice he was
nearly caught in the act. But Mrs. MacWhirr, in the drawing-room of the
forty-pound house, stifled a yawn--perhaps out of self-respect--for she
was alone.

She reclined in a plush-bottomed and gilt hammock-chair near a tiled
fireplace, with Japanese fans on the mantel and a glow of coals in the
grate. Lifting her hands, she glanced wearily here and there into the
many pages. It was not her fault they were so prosy, so completely
uninteresting--from "My darling wife" at the beginning, to "Your loving
husband" at the end. She couldn't be really expected to understand all
these ship affairs. She was glad, of course, to hear from him, but she
had never asked herself why, precisely.

". . . They are called typhoons . . . The mate did not seem to like it
. . . Not in books . . . Couldn't think of letting it go on. . . ."

The paper rustled sharply. ". . . . A calm that lasted more than twenty
minutes," she read perfunctorily; and the next words her thoughtless
eyes caught, on the top of another page, were: "see you and the children
again. . . ." She had a movement of impatience. He was always thinking
of coming home. He had never had such a good salary before. What was the
matter now?

It did not occur to her to turn back overleaf to look. She would have
found it recorded there that between 4 and 6 A. M. on December 25th,
Captain MacWhirr did actually think that his ship could not possibly
live another hour in such a sea, and that he would never see his wife
and children again. Nobody was to know this (his letters got mislaid