cradle the North Sea usually leaves a good deal to be desired. As they
all lay, in fairly sickening discomfort, in the cabin, lit only by an
evil-smelling oil-lamp that swayed back and forwards with each roll, the
heavy step of the captain was heard coming down the companion way.
Grisell had expected honesty from her fellow-travellers, and her store
of provisions was laid out in what she had considered a convenient
place. It did not take the captain long to devour every scrap of what
had been meant to last the girls and their maid for days. His gluttonous
meal over, he tramped up to the bed.

"Turn out! turn out!" he said to the women who lay there, and having
undressed himself lay down to snore in that five time's paid for
sleeping-place. It must have been somewhat of a comfort--if, indeed,
comfort was to be found in anything that night--that the captain did not
long enjoy his slumbers. A fierce gale began to blow, and during the
furious storm that never abated for many an hour to come, the captain
had to remain, drenched to the skin, on deck, working and directing with
all his might, in order to save his ship. They never saw him again until
they landed at the Brill. That night the two girls set out on foot to
tramp the weary miles to Rotterdam, a gentleman refugee from Scotland,
who had come over in the same boat, acting as their escort. The stormy
weather of the North Sea had followed them to land. It was a cold, wet,
dirty night, and Julian Home, still frail from illness, soon lost her
shoes in the mud. There was but one solution to the difficulty. The
gentleman shouldered their baggage along with his own; Grisell
shouldered her sister, and carried her all the rest of those weary
miles. At Rotterdam they found Sir Patrick Home and his eldest son
awaiting them, to take them on to their new home in Utrecht, and wet and
cold and tiredness were all forgotten at the sight of those dear faces,
and Grisell "felt nothing but happiness and contentment."