Hawtrey's Deputy by Harold Bindloss

During the next two days the _Scarrowmania_ shouldered her way westwards through the big, white-topped combers that rolled down upon her under a lowering sky before a moderate gale. There were no luxurious, steam-propelled hotels in the Canadian trade just then, and, loaded deep with railway metal as she was, she slopped the green seas in everywhere, and rolled her streaming sides out almost to her bilge. She also shivered and rattled horribly when her single screw swung clear and the tri-compound engines ran away.

Wyllard went down to the steerage every now and then, and Agatha, who contrived to keep on her feet, not infrequently accompanied him. She was glad of his society, for Mrs. Hastings was seldom in evidence, and no efforts could get Miss Rawlinson out of her berth. The gale, however, blew itself out at length, and the evening after it moderated Agatha was sitting near the head of one fiddle-guarded table in the saloon waiting for dinner, which the stewards had still some difficulty in bringing in. Wyllard's place was next to hers, but he had not appeared yet, nor, as it happened, had the skipper, who, however, did not invariably dine with the passengers. One of the two doors which led from the foot of the branching companion stairway into either side of the saloon stood open, and presently she saw Wyllard standing just outside it.