THE MAGNET

CHAPTER I

The big schooner-yacht Shark lay peacefully at anchor in Shoal Harbour, Maine. At her taffrail the National Yacht Ensign aired itself lazily in the land-breeze; from fore- and main-trucks fluttered the pennant of the N. Y. Yacht Club and the burgee of Captain Eliphalet Bell, U.S.N., retired.

A solid old seafaring tub was the Shark, built some time back in the seventies, when, no doubt, she had been a tremendous swell. She was square in the jowls, pug-nosed, paunch-bellied, with a stern like a coach-horse, and there was a break from her quarter-deck to the waist, and a high, t'gallant forecastle. Solid timber she was ... or at least looked to be, though a gimlet might have shown differently ... and what ballast she had was inside her and not jerking away at the keel in frantic efforts to whip out her spars.

For a yacht of her size the Shark probably carried the smallest crew on record, modern double-action hand-winches and other labour-saving devices being installed about her decks. Brightwork there was scarcely any, and that covered with a coat of shellac. Galvanised iron took the place of brass, but if the old schooner lacked the glitter of metal she certainly shone with spotless cleanliness.

One saw at the first glance that the Shark was less of a pleasure-craft than a floating home, and such a domicile she had truly been for fifteen years. Asthma and an insubordinate heart had retired her owner from the service of his country; the same affliction forbade his residence ashore and compelled him to seek a warm winter climate. Wherefore, he wisely bought the Shark for a mere song, and made of her a home for himself and his three little motherless daughters: Cécile, aged nine; Paula, aged seven, and Hermione, aged four.

That was fifteen years before the epoch of this saga, so that we find our three sirens at the dangerous ages of from nineteen to twenty-four. Little heed had their cantankerous parent ever given them, and little need had they of it, as from the very first day to the present, they had found a wise and kindly nurse, playmate, and duenna in that splendid old grizzled viking, Christian Heldstrom, Master Mariner.

Captain Heldstrom, sailing-master of the Shark, had previously served for ten years in the U.S. Navy and might have had a commission had he wished. Most of his service had been under the choleric Captain Bell, to whom, for some incomprehensible reason, he was devoted. It was, therefore, not unnatural that he should have followed him on his retirement, nor that he should have assumed the care of the little girls, the old Norseman having, like so many big-muscled, big-hearted men, a tremendous fund of paternal instinct. They had their governess, of course, but it was "Uncle Chris" who really brought them up and tended them when ill and imparted to them much of his own honest, fearless nature. He taught them discipline as well, and all three had more than once felt the flat of his big hand where it would do the greatest good; Cécile for impudence, Paula for theft (stealing goodies from the galley), and Hermione for adventuring aloft and swarming out on the jib-boom. This last admonition had been followed by a cuff on the side of the watchman's head which had sent that grinning tar into the scuppers.

Thus one may listen with less surprise to a certain conversation taking place upon the ample quarter-deck of the schooner, she squatting peacefully upon the sparkling waters of Shoal Harbour, one golden day early in August. Sprawled amongst the cushions on a transome, basking like a pussy-cat in the sun, was Cécile, a luscious beauty, ripe to the point of falling from the bough, and already petulant for the plucking. For three seasons this girl had demoralised the yachting world, for Captain Bell was widely known, and the Shark as hospitable as her namesake. A high-tempered but jovial host, epicurean of appetite and ready to immolate his health on the altar of good-fellowship at a moment's notice; three lovely daughters, one a desperate flirt, one soft and sweet as a West Indian night breeze, the third a long-legged nymph with violet eyes, her pretty mouth full of sailor slang, ready to swim a race around the ship or run one over the truck.... My word, it is no wonder that old Heldstrom's hair had visibly whitened in the last three years.

Cécile was catching it fore-and-aft upon this August day.

"It vas me br'rought you oop," growled the Norwegian in his beard, "und somedimes I am not pr'roud of it. How many yoong men haf you jilted this summer?"

Cécile dropped her chin on her knuckles and kicked up her heels most unmaidenly.

"I haven't jilted anybody. It's not my fault if they slam off in a rage. I don't ask any odds, and if they can't play the game without bawling, they shouldn't play it at all."

"Love is not a game; it is a serious business, as some day you may find oudt to your cost."

Cécile gave the nearest cushion a vicious kick, and her head a toss which set the bright hair to shimmering opalescent as a new-hooked porgy.

"Don't fear," she said; "when I find the man who can make me feel what I want to feel, he will have no cause to complain."

"Perhaps you may," Heldstrom retorted. He bent his big brows upon her flushed, resentful face, and his eyes, clear and blue as polar ice, softened a little. "I hope not, my dear. Meanvile, you must not encoorage dese oder yoong men..."

"But how am I to know..." Cécile interrupted, when Heldstrom raised his hand.

"You vill know. Und if you do not know, den it is not der r'right man." He took a turn or two on the deck, then paused to stare toward the harbour-mouth. Up forward the sailors were clustered about the windlass, talking in low, vehement tones, the murmur of which reached aft. "Less noise for'ard dere," ordered the captain in his great, resonant bass, and the gabble ceased. The hands were all staring toward the entrance, and as he looked forward Heldstrom gave a little growl in his throat.

"Dis Pilot-fish..." said he, turning abruptly toward Cécile. "Vas he anudder?"

"Another what?" she asked, sulkily.

"Anudder wictim. Anudder yoong man you haf made crazy ... und pull your skirt down by your ankles, my dear; you are now too oldt to flop ar'round dot vay like a little girl."

Cécile jerked her supple young body upright.

"If you are going to do nothing but scold," said she, sulkily, "I am going below." She sprang to her feet and stood as primly as was possible for one of her nymph-like allure. "I must say," she snapped and thrust out her chin haughtily, "it seems to me that I have reached an age where I might expect to be spared lessons in conduct from the sailing-master of my father's yacht."

She turned toward the companionway, head in air.

"Cécile!" said Heldstrom, sharply, and the little feet stopped as though despite themselves.

"Well...?"

"You vill say: 'Excuse me, Captain Heldstrom.'"

"I won't."

"You vill say: 'Excuse me, Captain Heldstrom.'"

Cécile pressed her lips firmly together.

"Look at me."

Slowly, and as if moved by some compelling force, the lovely, rebellious face was turned and the long, grey eyes, with their double fringe of black lashes, were raised to meet the clear blue ones flashing from under the bushy eyebrows. Cécile's eyes sought the deck.

"Forgive me, Uncle Chris," she murmured.

"Dot is efen better, my dear. Listen, Cécile; I am not a poor man und I am getting on in years. My brudder has left me lands und houses in Norvay und I own in some big ships. But I stay und sail dis old yoonk for your fadder und draw my pay vich is nodding, und vy? Because if I go, who den vill take care of my little girls? Your fadder is not rich; perhaps he is not so rich as me, but you are my family und all dot I have is yours, yoost as I am yours. Und so, my little girl, I talk to you like a Dootch uncle, und I am not Dootch, but Norwegian und a gentleman born. Dot is all, my dear."

But it was not quite all, for Cécile rushed to the old viking and flung her young arms about his neck and kissed the first exposed spot she could find on the deep-lined, bearded face.

Then she stepped back and surveyed him through misty eyes.

"When I meet a man like you," said she, and caught her breath, "he will find out that I am something more than a flirt."

And she turned and fled below.

Hardly had she disappeared when the captain's alert, if somewhat blurred, vision was caught by a yacht's dinghy rapidly approaching the Shark. Picking up his glasses he at once discovered, sitting in the stern of the boat, a young man whom he recognised as a Mr. Huntington Wood and who had been the previous summer one of Cécile's most devoted suitors. When the caprice of the spoiled beauty had sent him eddying in her wake with the other wrecks, Heldstrom had sighed deeply. He had liked and admired Wood, finding him all that a well-bred young American ought to be. Included amongst these virtues was a very large fortune, and Captain Heldstrom had been deeply disappointed that Cécile could not have found it in her heart to care for him.

Seeing that Wood was coming to call, Heldstrom sent the steward to inform Cécile, then received the guest himself, there being no one of the family on deck. Wood was a clean-cut, thoroughbred-looking man of about twenty-eight. Perhaps his greatest attraction lay in the thoughtful kindliness of expression which was habitual to him. There was humour, also, and the typical American alertness.

As Wood and Heldstrom exchanged their greetings there came from forward a sort of buzz of suppressed excitement. The hands were peering intently into the dazzling reflection of the sun on the water at the harbour-mouth. Captain Heldstrom quickly levelled his glass in that direction, then laid it down with a shrug and a shake of the head.

"What is it?" Wood asked.

"Der Pilot-fish, zir," answered the sailor.

"What do you mean?"

Heldstrom was about to reply when Cécile came up through the companion and Wood went to meet her. She greeted him with a rather quizzical smile. Wood flushed.

"You were right," said he. "Here I am back again in less than six months."

"We have missed you," said Cécile, and led the way aft.

"Thank you. I have come back, not as a suitor, but as a friend."

"Still bitter?"

"Not in the least."

"I heard," remarked Cécile, with a little laugh, "that you were building a Home for Sick Babies."

"That is true. My cure for bitterness ... and not a bad thing for the babies. If all of your rejected lovers would only turn to philanthropy for their cure what a lot of good you would do."

"That is a nasty remark."

"Sorry. Let's drop personalities. How are you all?"

"Papa's asthma is better. He has taken a tremendous fad for cooking, and spends most of his time stewing over the galley stove. This seems to be a good thing for him, though bad for us. The cook's wages have had to be raised."

Wood laughed. "And the girls?"

"Paula is as sweet as ever. Hermione has grown up. She is taller than I and is going to be a beauty."

From the hands clustered on the t'gallant forecastle there came at this moment a sort of stifled yelp, immediately followed by some deep-sea admonition from Captain Heldstrom. As if in answer to the commotion there popped out of the galley, which as in most old-fashioned vessels was in a forward deck-house, a corpulent gentleman with a crimson face, snow-white moustache, and a shining bald head whereof the lustre was marred by streaks of flour.

"Papa..." called Cécile.

Captain Bell, for it was he, turned sharply, and seeing Wood, his choleric face lightened. He tore off his apron, wiped his bare, floury arms, and came striding jerkily aft.

"Well, well, Huntington ... glad to see you, my boy. Excuse my negligée ... was just at work on an omelette soufflée, but somehow it went wrong. Infernal thing collapsed like a punctured tire. All the fault of this Pilot-fish...."

"What is the Pilot-fish?" asked Wood.

"Cécile will tell you while I brush up. You will stop for lunch ... yes, this is not a request, it is an order. I have made a plat that I want your opinion of." He glanced over the rail. "You are off the Arcturus?"

"Yes ... cruising with Livingston Poole. I leave him to-morrow. His people are to join him at Portland."

"Come and visit us a bit." He raised his voice. "Christian, tell that man from the Arcturus to go back and say that Mr. Wood is lunching with us."

"Yes, zir."

Pausing to search the horizon with his glasses, Captain Bell went below. Wood looked inquiringly at Cécile.

"Did you ever hear of a pilot-fish?" she asked.

"Yes. It is a little fish which is a constant companion of the shark. So this is a companion of yours?"

"There is a man who lives on a little yawl and goes wherever we go. Last summer we began to notice that, no matter where we were, there would turn up sooner or later this same little boat. Sometimes she would be in port when we arrived. No doubt he got our next address at the postoffice and then passed us en route. The Shark is about as speedy as a brick-barge, and this yawl is a smart little sailer."

"What is the game of this Pilot-fish?" asked Wood.

"It appears that we are his mind. He makes us do his thinking for him. Here comes papa; get him to tell you of his interview with the Pilot-fish."

Captain Bell, refreshed inside and out, appeared at this moment in the companionway. His first glance was for the harbour-mouth.

"Come here, papa," called Cécile, "and tell Huntington about your conversation with the Pilot-fish."

Captain Bell joined the two. "The Pilot-fish," said he, "is a balmy galoot in a little yawl who has been eddyin' around in our wake all summer. When it got certain that his whole business was to trail us I went alongside him and asked what he meant by such cheek. I found a long, tawny, sleepy-eyed scoundrel drinking tea and munching macaroons."

"'Good-day,' says he. 'Won't you come aboard? You are just in time for tea.'

"'Thanks,' said I, 'but I didn't come for tea. I came to ask why in thunder you hang under my fin like a bloomin' pilot-fish.'

"He sets down his tea-cup and turns a pair of yellow eyes on me.

"'Do you mind?' he asks. 'I don't want to intrude.'

"'That depends on what you do it for,' I answered.

"'Well, then,' says he, rumplin' up his hair, which is about a foot long and the colour of coir rope, 'I follow you because it saves me the trouble of deciding where I want to go.'

"'The deuce you do,' said I, too surprised to say more.

"'Do you mind?" he asks again.

"'I don't know that I mind,' said I, 'but you make me tired. Can't you do your own thinkin'?'

"'It's so distractin',' says he, and heaves a sigh. 'You see, Captain Bell, I am a poet and if I have to determine where I want to go it breaks into the Muse....'" And Bell went off into a fit of wheezy laughter which finished in a coughing spell. "Now what d'ye think of that...?" he gasped.

"It sounds fishy to me," Wood observed.

Bell nodded. "Still," said he, "there may be something in it, after all. I give you my word, I come near flying off my chump sometimes trying to decide where to go next. The girls will never help me out. But to go back to this balm. 'Just the same,' I said, 'it must be deuced inconvenient sometimes to follow me through all kinds of weather in that little thing.' Says he, 'That's good moral discipline. If it weren't for that I'd lie in one place and rot. You'd see the pond-lilies sproutin' from my spars. For instance...' says he, 'comin' up here I got started too late to catch the tide, and was dodging rocks in the fog all night long. That is an excellent way for a poet to refresh his faculties,' says he. 'Of my own initiative it would never happen, but I put myself under a moral obligation to go wherever and whenever you do.'"

Bell gave a plethoric chuckle. "'Well,' said I, 'at any rate, you must know your business. It was thick as pea soup.' Says he, waving his fin, 'I can usually find my way around...' And he took a swig of tea. Upon my word, I began to like him. He has only one man; a half-baked Finn with a cleft palate and one eye swung over to port; a warlock, if ever you saw one. The Pilot-fish told me that he found the beggar starving on the beach. Nobody would ship him, he was that rum. These two zanies scarcely ever speak. The Finn lives up forward and only comes aft to handle the boat and valet him. He was ironing his shirt on the fore-hatch while we talked. I asked him to dinner and you'd have thought from his face that I'd suggested our havin' a glass of potassium cyanide together. 'Oh, no ... no ... no ...' says he, takin' a grip of his yellow thatch. Said I: 'What's the matter? I'm not planning to poison you.' He began to spatter out apologies; said that once he had met my household he would not feel at liberty to tag me around, and asked me once more if I was sure that I did not object. 'Follow me to Hades if you like,' said I. 'The sea is free to all, and you never get within half a mile, anyway.' My word, he was so upset he broke his tea-cup against the coamin', and I left him tryin' to swig his tea out of nothin' and bitin' the china ring around his finger. Coming off that evening we passed the Finn. 'Kennybunkport Kennybunkportkennybunkportkennybunkport...' he was patterin' to himself. You see, he'd been ashore to find out our forwarding address. When we reached Kennebunkport sure enough, here was this floatin' bug-house lyin' at anchor and the Pilot-fish refreshin' himself with tea and macaroons. As we rounded up..."

His narrative was interrupted by a commotion forward. The men were talking and gesticulating. Out of the galley bounced the cook, a pair of battered glasses in his hand. Up through the pantry hatch popped the steward like a rabbit coming out of his hole, and the girls' maid, a matronly woman, followed him.

"Look-a-that!" growled Bell, in disgust. "You'd think the White Squadron was comin' in..." He levelled his glasses at the swimming glare. "Confound him ... it's he ... and Cécile gets into me for ten dollars."

Down below a cabin clock rang sharply two bells. "Two bells, sir," said a quartermaster. "Make it so," snapped Bell, for the Shark's routine was strictly naval.

Two bells were struck forward, to be followed by a smothered chorus of exultation from the winners of sundry bets. "Silence, there," cried Bell, and added to Wood: "This ship has got to be no more than a bloomin' Grand Stand. That lobster has lost me ten dollars. He must have stopped to fish."

Captain Heldstrom started forward, smiling under his grizzled beard.

"Win, captain?" snapped Bell.

"Fife dollars ... from der cook, zir," answered the captain.

"I'm glad it was the cook..." muttered Bell.

"This Pilot-fish," observed Wood, "has got the races beaten to a finish."

All eyes aboard the Shark were directed over the starboard bow. Out of the vivid glare appeared presently a small, chunky vessel, yawl-rigged, though from the size of her mizzen she might have been classed as a ketch. No bunting did she fling to the light, offshore breeze; no pennant, burgee, ensign, nor even so much as a tell-tale at her truck. Huntington, a yachtsman of some experience, doubted that she had been designed and built for a yacht. Beating back and forth across the bay, the yawl finally made her berth about halfway between the Shark and the eastern side of the harbour.

"What is her name?" asked Wood.

"Her name," Bell answered, "goes with the tea and macaroons. It is Daffodil."

"Oh, fudge..."

"His name," said Cécile, "is Harold Applebo."

She had expected to hear a feeble cry for help, but was disappointed. Wood sprang up from his lounging position.

"Harold Applebo..." he cried. "Why, he was a classmate of mine. I might have known ... from your father's description."

Cécile opened wide her grey eyes. "Tell us about him," said she.

"Harold Applebo," Wood began, "is eccentric and a poet. At college, however, he was not considered by any means a fool."

"Does he write good verse?" asked Cécile.

"One needs to get into the bath-tub to read it. Yet, although mushy, he has a few admirers, and has published two books, doubtless at his own expense. Selections from the first were read to me this summer by a friend. When she had finished my head felt like a bottle full of bees. There was one 'Ode to a Dew-drop in the Heart of a Pansy'; another was called 'Flowers at Play.'"

"Nuf', nuf' ... let me up..." murmured Bell.

"I managed to keep my strength," continued Wood, "until my friend, who happened to be a young mother, recited from memory, 'Baby in the Asphodel.' That finished me. I have never felt the same toward babies since. That is unfortunate, considering my charity."

He levelled a glass toward the yawl. "Yes ... I see Harold ... and there is a thing like a gollywog getting into the dink."

"The Finn," said Cécile. "Tell us some more about Applebo."

"At college he kept house with a parrot and a bull-pup, and was known to have eccentric ideas. He did not believe in friendship, saying that one's attitude should be the same toward all of one's fellows. Although known to be tremendously powerful physically, nothing would induce him to enter athletics. He said that the demonstration of individual prowess was a vain exhibition of superiority, and therefore not ethical. It was observed that his arguments were beautifully adapted to his own tastes."

"Sounds rather an interestin' ass," said Bell. "Why not jump into the dinghy and see if you can't get him for lunch? He might come for you."

Wood glanced at Cécile, who nodded.

"Do," said she. "Tell him that he may let us do his thinking for him, just the same."

"Very well," answered Wood, always obliging. Captain Bell raised his fat, throaty voice.

"Away ... dinghy..." he called to the quartermaster on duty.

CHAPTER II

While Captain Bell, Cécile, and Huntington Wood were idly discussing the manœuvres of the Pilot-fish, and different members of the crew were engaged in settling their bets, there was one person aboard the schooner who was taking measures to put an end to the peculiar devotion of Mr. Harold Applebo, poet.

In her roomy cabin below, Miss Hermione Bell had heard the exclamations which announced the sighting of the Pilot-fish. The port-hole over her bunk commanded a view of the harbour-mouth, and resting on brackets overhead was a big, battered old-fashioned telescope. Hermione threw down her book, reached up for the glass, and took a dead rest on the brass rim of the port-hole, when the Daffodil sprang to meet her vision, swimming unsteadily in the vivid reflection of the sun.

Once the yawl was clear of the glare, Hermione was able to examine her in detail. The first object to catch her eye was a figure squatting in a toad-like way up forward, and which, even as she looked, scrambled upright, as though in obedience to an order, and began to clear the anchor. Hermione observed that the man's body was disproportionately wide for its height, that his head resembled a deck-swab, and that the legs were very bowed.

"The Finn..." she muttered. "What a brute! He looks like a sea-spider."

Passing from the Finn, she tried to distinguish the figure at the wheel, but all that was visible above the high coaming was a mop of reddish-yellow hair and one big, bare shoulder. As though conscious that he were under scrutiny, Applebo kept his face persistently turned away, and Hermione had learned by experience that when he was presently forced to go about, he would shift himself to the other side of the cockpit, keeping his back to the Shark. The wheel of the yawl was placed very low and almost hidden by the high coaming.

"Hang him!" Hermione burst out, and closed the telescope with a vicious snap.

For several minutes she sat on the edge of her bunk, lost in thought, her head tilted slightly forward and her eyes unfocussed. One graceful leg hung straight down; the other was tucked under her, schoolgirl fashion. Her kimono, open at the throat, showed that splendid, arching bust seen most frequently in singers. Hermione was not a singer, but she was a strong swimmer, and the lung development is similar. Her neck was straight and strong, the little nuque a detail for sculptors to dream of, carrying its subtle curve to hide in the thick, black, lustrous hair. Hermione's type was Keltic; Irish and French would both have claimed her, the latter for an Auvergnatte, because of her very deep violet eyes and the little nose with the retroussé tip, which all three of the girls had from their mother. Hermione was taller than her sisters and was destined to be a big woman at maturity, this promise being so far draped in youth.

Europeans found Hermione far more beautiful than Cécile, and Paula lovelier than either. But to the American taste the girl's type was too tropical, even her indigo eyes commonly passing for black. There was also about her a tempestuosity which appalled most people. Hermione was not a hoyden; she was far too feminine for that, but she was temperamentally impetuous, often to the point of violence, and her discourse, when angered, was not always what it should be. Christian Heldstrom worshipped the planks she trod on ... and she had given him more trouble than both of the others put together. Which is to say, that she gave him more trouble than did Cécile, as Paula was always good.

Hermione had already many beaus, whom she treated like dogs. Yet her method was kinder than Cécile's, for Hermione never flirted. If she liked a man, she permitted him to row and sail and swim with her; if she did not like him, she told him to clear out. For gallantry she had no patience and was apt to receive with contumely the most subtle of flatteries.

And yet...

Hermione's long, round arm reached for the lid of a little locker beside her bunk. Therefrom she took a large package of cream, or rather, corn-coloured note-paper closely covered by a small, regular handwriting which at the first glance resembled Greek script. From this package Hermione selected a sheet at random, then flinging herself face downward on the bunk, dropped her pretty chin into one hand, and resting on her elbow, she proceeded to acquire the following interesting information:—

TO HERMIONE

The fog may blanket the sleeping sea,
Hermione;
Sunbeams may falter, moonbeams pale
May swoon at the frown of the darkling gale.
I follow thee,
Hermione.

The skies may weep or the tempest shrill,
Hermione;
Tide-rips may growl and the rock-fangs yawn
And sea-traps be set in the lightless dawn.
I follow still,
Hermione.

I may not see thee nor hear thy voice,
Hermione;
Nothing I ask but to feel thou art there,
To share thy ocean, to breathe thy air.
So I rejoice,
Hermione.

Thus if I sing one little song,
Hermione,
'Tis the cry of the gull swept off on the wind.
One soundless sigh of a love that is blind.
Forgive my wrong,
Hermione.

Hermione read the verses twice through, then stared at the white bulkhead.

"Fool!" was her polite comment.

There were a great many of these poems, each bearing a different date, and each a souvenir of some port where the Shark had visited. Over a period of three months ran the verses, and not once during that time had the poet been within a quarter of a mile of her to Hermione's knowledge. Once or twice she had caught a glimpse of Applebo's face through her telescope, but never a satisfactory one. Paula was the only one of the girls who had ever seen him at close range; she had come on him face to face in the post-office, but had been quite unable to say whether or not he was good to look at.

The verses always came most prosaically through the mail. All three of the sisters had a large correspondence, so that Hermione's corn-coloured letters, with their peculiar calligraphy, had excited no especial comment. Once or twice she had been asked from whom they were. "A darn fool..." Hermione had answered, for which her father, old sinner that he was, saw fit to reprove her.

Hermione lay on her bunk and kicked up her heels and read her verses, sometimes with a curling lip when the sentiment impressed her as particularly mushy. Yet, oddly enough, there was a flush glowing darkly through the olive of her cheeks, and any one would have sworn that her eyes were a very velvety tone of black. Once or twice her long, lithe young body squirmed uneasily and her broad forehead clouded as though from displeasure.

Certainly, there was, aside from the presumption of the poet in sending her the verses at all, nothing to give offence in Applebo's effusions. All were of the very essence of delicacy, and each carried somewhere in its text a little word of apology.

Hermione rose suddenly, flung the leaflets back into the locker, and sat for a moment with brooding eyes and the warm flush burning through her clear, olive skin. The girl never burned nor tanned nor chapped; her complexion preserved invariably its delicacy of tint and texture.

"What a lot of rot..." muttered Hermione to herself. "The man's an idiot. If I make him feel like that, why doesn't he come over and kick about it instead of flopping around in that little tub and writing me fathoms of slush? Here's where he gets a little sonnet from his Hermione."

With her flush even darker, she reached for her writing block and penned the following epistle:—

SCHOONER-YACHT Shark, Shoal Harbour,
August fourth.

HAROLD APPLEBO, ESQ., Yacht Daffodil.

Dear Sir:—Has it ever occurred to you that it is scarcely fair to my sisters, Cécile and Paula, that I, the youngest, should be the sole recipient of so many poetic gems? Inasmuch as your acquaintance with them is precisely that of our own, my sense of fairness no longer permits of my being the only favoured one.

I must, therefore, request that you transfer your delicate attentions for the next few weeks, at least. This measure will also give me an opportunity to recover from the emotions produced by your latest:—"Hermione's Eyes" ... which, by the way, do not happen to be "grey as the sleeping sea."

Thanking you for your delicate attentions, and in the hope that my sisters may appreciate them even more than my limited poetic faculty has permitted,

Very truly yours,
HERMIONE BELL.

"There," said Hermione, "if that doesn't send the sentimental youth flapping out to sea, I'll give him something that will."

She sealed and addressed the letter and proceeded to dress, putting on a white-serge sailor blouse and skirt, the latter short enough to clear her trim ankles. The thick, black hair she wound in snug bands about her head, added a crimson ribbon, and capped the whole with a white tam. Thus costumed she appeared a tall, slenderly graceful girl with a pretty, tantalising face, of which one carried away an impression of warm, vivid colouring, sapphire eyes, tip-tilted nose, and red lips ever ready to return insults for the kisses which would seem to fit them. Hermione always looked slender to the point of being thin when smartly dressed; it needed her bathing-suit or a riding-habit to reveal her as the Diana which she was. Whether for good or ill, the mother had left a rich legacy of physical beauty to her three girls.

As Hermione went on deck she saw Wood pulling away in the dinghy in the direction of the Daffodil. He had declined the offer of a man to row him, and had promised to do his best to bring Applebo back for luncheon.

"Where is Huntington going?" asked Hermione of Cécile. "I thought he was to stay for lunch."

"So he is. We sent him over to see if he couldn't induce the Pilot-fish to come, too. It seems they were classmates at Yale."

"Applebo won't come," said Hermione.

"Why not?" asked her father.

"It would strip him of his sentimental pose to be formally presented. I'm going ashore to post a letter."

The quartermaster brought her own little cedar skiff alongside, and Hermione got aboard and pulled in for the landing of the Reading Room. Arrived, the boatman took charge of the skiff, and Hermione started to walk up the steep path which led through the scrub pines and was a short cut to the village. She had gone about half the distance when she saw, waddling rapidly toward her and resembling in the thicket some gnome or troll, a short, squat figure which she recognised immediately as the Finn.

Hermione had several times seen the man at close range, the last of these occasions being while he was propelled to the landing in a wheelbarrow, insensible with drink, and suggesting some great pulpy kraken or other fetid creature of the deep. It had taken the girl a couple of days to get over the effect produced by the sight of the sodden, inert body, bloated purple face with its shock of wild, black hair, and the misshapen limbs dangling and flopping grotesquely over the sides of the barrow.

Now, as she saw him approaching, Hermione felt a strong impulse to turn and bolt. Even at the distance of one hundred yards she could distinguish the pallid face which the sun seemed powerless to tan. As she drew closer she observed, with a shudder, the wide cleft in the upper-lip and the eyes set so painfully askew that the man was forced to turn his head almost at right-angles to his shoulders in order to look at an object in front of him.

Pride kept Hermione straight on her course; then, as the Finn drew near, it occurred to her to give her note to him. This would obviate furnishing information to a possibly curious and inquisitive postmistress, for both the Shark and the Daffodil had spent a good deal of the summer at Shoal Harbour, where the striking personality of Applebo must have attracted a certain amount of attention.

Therefore, as the Finn drew abreast of her, Hermione made a sign with her hand. His head still cocked sideways and somewhat curiously suggesting that of a sea-bird hunting its food in the spray, the man waddled up. Hermione, watching him half in disgust, half in curiosity, received a surprise. For the face of the Finn, distorted as it was, held, nevertheless, a sort of wild and spiritual beauty. Whether this was because of an expression of infinite pathos and suffering, or owing to the beautifully shaped forehead and deep, velvety brown of the eyes, Hermione could not have said, but suddenly all of her repulsion vanished, leaving only kindliness and pity. The expression in the great, melting brown eyes, twisted as they were, suggested that which one might see in the eyes of a faithful Newfoundland, his back broken by a motor-car.

Hermione held out her letter. The Finn took it with a smile, then bowed.

"For your master," said Hermione.

The Finn smiled and nodded.

"Yo, leddy..." said he.

Hermione, thinking to tip him, opened her purse. To her surprise the man sprang back, while an expression, almost of fright, filled the misshapen face.

"Na ... na ... na..." he mumbled. Hermione noticed that while he held up one big, gnarled hand, as if in protest, he was nevertheless drawing nearer, and that in a stealthy, sidelong way. Startled, she snapped shut her pocketbook.

"What's the matter?" she asked, sharply.

The Finn's face fell. He drew the back of his hand across his forehead. Hermione saw that it was beaded with perspiration.

The Finn looked at her with a tragic sort of smile, pointed to the purse, then made a motion as of one drinking deeply. Hermione understood.

"You are afraid that if I give you some change you may drink?" she asked.

The Finn nodded vigorously, stood for a moment regarding her, then, with a tug at his forelock, turned on his heel and scuttled off down the slope toward the landing.

CHAPTER III

Close aboard the Daffodil, Wood was about to lift his voice in a hail when there came to his ears the sounds of one declaiming in a rich and resonant bass. Having observed the departure of the Finn some half-hour earlier, Wood decided that Mr. Applebo must be refreshing his solitude by the recital of some of his own verse. It was therefore with no more consciousness of eavesdropping than has one who pauses to listen to the practising of a musician that Wood rested on his oars, to be startled by the following interrogation:—

"Tell me, beloved, since your eyes
Hold all the azure of the skies,
Why, then, when night their brightness mars,
Those lustrous depths hold all the stars?
But when the day's once more begun,
I look, and lo ... there shines the sun,
And when it sets, alack too soon,
In each deep orb I find the moon."

"The answer is, Hermione,
All heaven's in those eyes for me."

Before Wood could sufficiently recover from the astonishment produced by this innocent query and its answer, the same voice continued in prose, apparently in criticism of the effort and as follows:

"Shucks ... How do I know her eyes are azure? ... I never saw them.... They might be cadmium or cobalt or madder lake, for all me." (A pause, then) "when night their brightness mars ... mars ... oh, hell, what does it mar it with ... a handful of mud?" (Another pause, then) "Mars is rotten ... let's see ... mars, cars, spars, tars, chars, bars ... augh ... what the deuce ... oh, let it go; it's no worse than the rest. In each deep orb ... fudge, I wonder how many thousand millions of bum poets have said that ... oh, dammit ... dammit ... dammitttt..."

There came the sound of paper violently torn. Wood, smothering his laughter at this unofficial peep into the soul of the poet, raised his voice:—

"Aboard the Daffodil..."

There was no answer. Wood tried again.

"Aboard the daffy daffodilly ... I say ... Harold..."

Followed an instant of silence, then a tawny, leonine head was pushed up through the hatch.

"Hello, Harold!" said Wood.

The poet blinked a pair of clear, amber-coloured eyes. His mane of ruddy-yellow hair was touselled and his expression was that of a person surprised in a yawn.

"Hello, Huntington!" he drawled, in a very deep and husky bass. The yellow eyes blinked once or twice at the dinghy. "You're off the Shark?"

"Jusso, Mr. Pilot-fish. May I come aboard?"

"Pray do. I am in the act of brewing tea. Sorry I haven't anything more robust to offer you. I cannot keep spirits, as my crew is a Finn with second sight and an alcoholic affinity. He can spot a whiskey-bottle through a teak locker; then he forces the lock and drinks all that there is without reference to the next man. If there were a gallon, he would drink it all."

"And then what?" asked Wood.

"Then I chain him to the mainmast so that he will not start to swim back to Finland. However, my tea is very good. So are the macaroons ... after you scrape off the green mould. The weather has been warm and humid, and I cannot get fresh ones here. I have wired to Boston for a supply. But come aboard..."

He reached over the side for the painter of the dinghy, and caught a clove-hitch one-handedly and with a deftness which did not suggest the amateur. Huntington stepped aboard and looked about with interest.

"A handy little boat," he said.

"Yes. She was designed for a Block Island sword-fisher. I bought her on the stocks before they had touched her inside. These boats' plans are all got out by yacht designers. She is not dull."

"No motor?"

"No. They smell, and the grease would soil my manuscripts. Besides, the beat of the engine would get in my head and spoil my metre. Think of trying to write dactylic hexameter with an accursed motor pounding away:—'Juba-this ... Juba-that...' Come below. Our tannin is distilled."

In the cosey cabin, singular for its extreme bareness and singular yellow colour-scheme, Wood seated himself upon the edge of the bunk and watched the poet as he poured the tea. Mr. Applebo was in his customary service rig of faded yellow rowing-shirt, white duck trousers, and leather sandals. His long, wavy hair, naturally of a reddish yellow, was sun-bleached to the lustreless tone of oakum, and hung in heavy clusters that almost hid his ears. The lithe, beautifully muscled figure was flawless, so far as one could see; big-boned, brawny, deep-chested, yet with a suggestion of lightness and grace which one associates with statues of Hermes. His skin, wherever visible, was of the quality of satin, the colour of old-gold, and his hands, while hardened from physical work and the handling of wet ropes, were exquisitely shaped, the fingers straight and strong and well-spaced.

Most striking of all was the poet's face, and it was here that one paused in doubt before rendering a verdict upon Mr. Applebo's physical attractiveness. In feature and expression there seemed to be no standard with which to compare the man's singular type ... or at least, no human standard. Many faces find their caricatures in the lower animals; one sees people who resemble, or at least, suggest the sheep, monkey, bull-dog, camel, etc. Applebo's face suggested a sleepy lion. There was the same tawny colour-scheme, the blinking, amber eyes focussed on some far-distant point, the straight, broad nose with a mouth which was slightly lifted in the middle, cheeks cut away and showing a prominent malar bone ... certainly, the general resemblance was rather toward the cat carnivora than toward anything human.

So far as expression went, Wood could discover absolutely nothing. There was about the poet an atmosphere of languor, either real or assumed, and one felt that if this sloth could be torn aside, the true man or animal, beneath, might stand revealed.

"What do you do on this boat?" asked Wood.

"I dream dreams ... and laugh at them. I weave long and fascinating romances of which I am the glorious hero ... and laugh at them. Also, I write many wingèd words."

"And laugh at them?"

"No. Other people do that."

"I have been sent over here," said Wood, "to order you to report for luncheon aboard the Shark. They are getting tired of you as merely a parlor game."

Applebo looked a little scared.

"Thanks awfully..." he said, less dreamily, "but I cannot go. My delicate sense of social ethics prevents."

"Rot!"

"Really. My extreme sensitiveness. You can't tag strangers about until they ask you to luncheon, nor, having been so weak as to yield to the temptation and accept, could you continue to tag. Then I would be all adrift and not know which way to sail."

"Harold," said Wood, "please go and sing that to the sirens. I am wise to your ingenious sophistries. You are in love with a lady, oh poet. That, and not a lacking initiative, is the reason of your singular fidelity to yon tub."

Applebo raised his tawny head, and blinked once or twice at his guest. Then, in the same dreamy way, he lowered his full cup from his lips. Nothing was more remote from his manner than any hint of agitation, wherefore it struck Wood as odd that he should have let the cup turn in his hand and spill the scalding tea on the dorsum of his bare foot.

"Confound it!" quoth the poet, and grabbed at his foot. The tea-cup struck the edge of the spirit stove and broke, leaving the porcelain ring of the handle on Applebo's finger. Forgetting his foot, he looked at it and blinked.

"There..." said he. "That is the second time that this has happened. A ring upon my finger the minute that my true motive is questioned. I do not like that."

"You ought to," observed Wood, "since you are in love with her."

"Not necessarily. My intentions are honourable but not matrimonial, and a ring is not the symbol of love but of marriage."

"Cynic..."

"No ... poet. Love to the poet is part of his material. It is the most important of his implements of craft. His motive force. I love, but I ask nothing in return ... beyond being permitted to love from afar. But not too far. A poet must be in the general neighbourhood of his inspiration."

"Stop ... my tea is coming up..."

"Worldling! No doubt you are in love with her yourself." The voice of the poet held the tone of one being roused from a beauty-sleep. "I hope that you are ... and that she returns your passion. So much the better. A hopeless love is always productive of the purest verse. The Italian poets understood this. It is all that I needed."

"If I listen to you any longer you will have to chain me to the mainmast with the Finn. Why did you pick out Hermione?"

The eyes of the poet shot him a yellow gleam.

"What makes you think that it is Hermione?"

"You were yapping her name as I came alongside. Never mind; I will not betray you. But I wish that you would let me tell them that it is hopeless passion and not feeble-mindedness which leads you on in the wake of the Shark. They would be so pleased."

"Tell them, if you like. It does not matter, since we are destined never to meet. But don't tell which one I am in love with. The others might tease her. All women are cats."

"A lover-like opinion...."

"I am very fond of cats. They are my index ... just as yellow is my colour. I am really very much in love with Hermione."

"When did you see her?"

"Last winter. It was her superb walk that vanquished me. I have never seen her, bow-on. Last winter, on my way down Fifth Avenue every morning to breakfast at the club, I often overhauled her. But I never passed. She drifted along like a marsh lily gathered by the flood."

"But she might enjoy meeting you."

Applebo shook his head. "I am wedded to my Muse. She will not brook a rival. Should Hermione enter my life, I would never write another poem. You see, I would be merely living one. Have a macaroon. There is very little mould on this one."

Wood glanced at him with suspicion, but Applebo's face would have made that of the Sphinx look open and confiding. A big, yellow tom-cat he appeared as he sat there, great shoulders hunched forward, back bent, blinking impenetrably at his guest. He finished a macaroon and licked the crumbs from his lips, and looked even cattier. It would not have surprised his guest had he begun to purr.

"Where did you learn so much seamanship?" asked Wood. "Captain Bell says that the way you find your way around is uncanny."

Applebo waved his hand and shrugged.

"A mere instinct. One might almost say a lower attribute and shared with birds, mammals, and fishes. I am not proud of it."

"Do you write poems of the sea?"

"Sometimes, but the subject does not interest me. A great, empty desolate waste of wet. No, why write poems of the sea when there are so many lovable things; old gardens and dear old people; little children and lovely women ... the last, always in the abstract." His amber eyes glowed.

Wood stared at him keenly, but Applebo appeared oblivious. Wood rose to his feet.

"It is almost two bells," said he, "I must be getting back. Sorry you will not come."

"Thank you, dear boy. Please make all of my excuses. Tell them what you like ... only mention no names. Express my deep appreciation of their goodness, and thank them in my name for permitting me to rot around in their wake. Good-bye ... God bless you."

In a very pensive mood Wood pulled back to the Shark, where his lack of success was received somewhat caustically by Cécile. But at the luncheon table Wood had his revenge.

"It is just as I thought," said he. "Applebo's plea that he follows the Shark about to save himself the wear and tear of deciding where to go is all a bluff."

Had he been looking at Hermione as he made this statement, Wood might have seen something in her face to have given him food for thought. But he was looking at Cécile, not without a certain touch of malice. Since the coquette had rather cruelly thrown him over after having given him reason to believe that he was not indifferent to her, Wood had done a good deal of thinking, finally to arrive at the conclusion that all had happened for the best, and that a girl who could find it in her heart to do this sort of thing was not the girl that any man should want to marry. He no longer loved Cécile, and was therefore no longer blind to her faults. Conspicuous amongst these was a tremendous appreciation of her own charms, and Wood felt instinctively that, on learning of Applebo's confession, Cécile would immediately appropriate this devotion to herself. Wood bore no rancour for her treatment of himself, but he would scarcely have been human had he not found a certain cynical enjoyment in the situation.

"I am not at liberty to mention any names," said he, "but when I directly accused him of being secretly in love with some lady aboard the Shark, Applebo acknowledged that this was the fact."

Hermione's blue eyes opened very wide and a sudden rich colour flooded her face. Captain Bell and Wood were, however, looking at Cécile. Paula, the second sister, was lunching with friends ashore.

Cécile's black, curving lashes swept down, and she looked at her plate and laughed, while a delicate colour tinged her soft cheeks. Secretly, she had suspected for a long time precisely what Wood had just stated, and the news brought to her that flush of triumph which attended every new and interesting conquest.

Captain Bell surveyed his eldest daughter with disgust.

"My word!" he snapped. "Has it come to a point where they follow her around in boats?"

Wood glanced at Hermione with the slightest suspicion of a wink. She coloured and laughed. Hermione and Cécile had but little in common, and aside from a certain amount of sisterly affection, were rather indifferent to each other. Cécile disapproved Hermione's frank, impetuous manner, and Hermione detested her sister's cold-blooded coquetries. Both of the girls adored their sister Paula.

"Applebo's is a somewhat peculiar devotion," Wood observed, "but that is to be expected, considering Applebo. He asks only to worship from afar. It appears that his sentiment is useful as a source of inspiration; 'motive force,' as he expressed it. He even went so far as to say that it would profit him even more if some other person were to win the heart of his inamorata, as hopeless passion was always productive of the best poetic results."

"Huh..." grunted Bell. "I told you he was a balm!"

"So he intends never to meet me ... us ...?" Cécile corrected herself, but not in time to save the laugh.

"A modest young person, my daughter Cécile," said Bell, dryly. "Of course it's not within the scope of human possibility that Paula or Hermione should have found favour in the eyes of this omelette-head. Cut another notch in your gunstock, my dear..." And he continued in this ironic strain until Hermione and Wood took pity on Cécile and changed the conversation by sheer weight of voices.

Toward the middle of the afternoon Paula Bell returned aboard. There was nothing of the sea about this girl, who was wholly of the warm and comforting earth. Paula's type was such as one sees in the sculptured figures of French public buildings, lending themselves to emblematic decoration, and representing Ceres, with overflowing cornucopia, Justitia with her scales, or perhaps an opulent creature to depict La Vendange, the vintage, or Return of the Grape. In face and figure Paula might have posed for one of these splendid, heroic sculptures. Already, at twenty-two, her form was gracefully mature, and her face, pure of feature, had that pretty alluringness of expression with which the French sculptors know so well how to sweeten and vitalise the classic Greek. We Anglo-Saxons, on the contrary, seeking to copy directly from the ancients, are too apt to get as a result the well-known, frozen-faced females which suggest rather George Washington, a suffragette, or an idealised William Jennings Bryan than the desired Mother of the Earth.

"What do you think...?" cried Paula. "I met the Pilot-fish face to face."

"You did!" cried Hermione. "What did he do?"

"Nothing. It was in the post-office. He stood with his eyes fixed on infinity while the clerk sorted his mail. He is very striking in appearance and as graceful as a panther. People turn to look at him."

"How was he dressed?" asked Cécile.

"Beautifully ... but not the least hint of the nautical. White serge suit, straw-coloured pongee shirt with a dark, smoky-orange colour tie, yellow buckskin shoes. His hair is long and beautifully ondulé; such a chevelure is wasted on most men, but not on the Pilot-fish. I wonder if he sleeps with it in papers."

"No," said Wood. "It has always been like that. Freshman year the Sophs tried to cut it for him. The infirmary did a big business for a week. His bull-pup and parrot got in the game and bit one man and gouged the ear of another. The next night the Sophs went back in force to do the job or die. Harold waited until they got inside, then locked the door, threw the key under the bed, and pulled aside the curtains of an alcove. Here was a forbidding-looking keg with "POWDER" stencilled on the side in big red letters, and a fuse in the top. Before anybody could stop him, Harold let out a fearful yell and lighted the fuse. It began to sputter, and the Sophs lost interest in Harold's hair. You see, he was known to be such a wild freak that there was no telling what he might not do, so out they went, taking the door with them and piling up in a heap in the corridor, which was narrow. The fuse reached the bung-hole, when there came a sort of mild explosion. One man fainted. When the smoke cleared away, there was Harold drawing beer out of the other end of the keg. They let him keep his hair."

Cécile did not join in the laughter of the others.

"Then he is a sort of clown?" she asked, a little sharply.

Wood shook his head. "Not a bit. It seems to me that the others were the ones to perform."

Cécile made no answer. To herself she was registering a little vow that she would put the leonine Mr. Applebo through his tricks, and that before she was many days older.

There was to be a little dinner party aboard the Shark that night, and Captain Bell, the most recent of whose fads was the culinary arts, had spent his morning in the galley, preparing certain dishes with which to "surprise" his guests. This innocent pastime of their father's had been encouraged by the girls; as Hermione said, "it kept him out of mischief, while the heat of the galley, acting as a Turkish bath, was good for his asthma."

In the present instance, however, this beneficial occupation was destined to directly affect the future affairs of several people, notably those of Mr. Harold Applebo.

It was during the soup course Captain Bell ventured to expand a little to his guests on the higher attributes of the culinary art:—

"A cook," he observed, didactically, "is far above the menial class. He is an artist, and entitled to the same respectful consideration which might be shown a sculptor, painter, poet, or musician. More, in fact, because a cook ministers, not only to our æsthetic sense and intellectual demands, but to the physical as well. In substantiation of these statements, I am about to offer you an entrée made this morning by my own hands ... ah..."

The peroration was cut short by the entrance of the steward bearing the gastronomic chef-d'œuvre, which was in the form of a vol-au-vent, or chicken-pie. At first glance, the dish appeared to be highly successful. The crust was brown and flaky, and seemed to promise succulent delicacies within. After the first anxious glance, Captain Bell sank back into his chair and looked about with the benevolent expression of one about to confer a rare treat upon his friends.

The steward, struggling manfully with his grin, presented the dish to Cécile, who proceeded to attack it with a blunt knife. The crust sagged like the head of a slack drum, but refused to give up its dead. Cécile exerted a little more pressure. The crust held valiantly, while certain unhallowed gurglings came from beneath. Everybody was watching Cécile with that painful anxiety peculiar to such moments. Bell began to fidget.

"Cut into it..." he snapped. "The chicken ain't goin' to bite you."

The popular tension found relief in a laugh at this witticism. Bell glared, and the ill-timed mirth subsided. Cécile threw her solid weight upon the knife. It bent, and a tiny jet of juice found its exit, hitting Mr. Poole in the eye. He wiped it furtively, and the others pretended not to have observed the accident.

"Briggs, give me a pointed knife," said Cécile.

"Of course..." growled Bell. "Always serve a pointed knife with a pastry."

The perspiring Briggs fetched the desired weapon. Thus armed, Cécile successfully attacked the crust, which she flayed back as one might skin an animal. She helped herself daintily, and the dish was passed to Wood, all eyes watching him as though he were about to draw in any other lottery.

Politic youth that he was, Wood helped himself generously, when there rolled out of the gravy upon his plate, a small, kitchen salt-cellar.

"Thunderation!" snapped the host, "so that's where it went. I hunted half an hour for that thing...."

"Papa..." protested Cécile. Nobody else could speak, and the faces around the board were crimson. Their host was known by his guests to take himself very seriously.

Wood tried again, this time exhuming what appeared to be a misshapen piece of rubber, but which a clever comparative anatomist might have recognised as the sacrum of a fowl with its muscular attachments.

"It smells delicious..." said the young man. He tried to cut the lump, which slipped from beneath his knife and bounded across the saloon. Wood's face expressed polite disappointment at the loss of the relish. The suffering steward, unable to look at him, hurried on with the dish, passing it next to Hermione, who ripped off a ragged piece of the "crust," which she proceeded to cover with a substance much resembling asphalt.

Mr. Poole, Wood's host on the Arcturus, came next. The face of this gentleman was painfully congested and his hand trembled so that he could scarcely hold the spoon. Bell watched him narrowly. It was at moments such as these that he was apt to form his friendships and enmities.

Hermione saw that Poole was not up to the ordeal and came generously to the rescue.

"Be careful..." said she, "papa lost his watch a few days ago, and he would never forgive you if you were to break it."

Even Captain Bell had to join in the roar which followed. But there was a fighting gleam in his eye which boded ill for somebody.

"That's right, laugh..." roared Bell. "Funny, ain't it ... and you girls know perfectly well that this is the first dish o' mine that's gone wrong since ... since..."

"Since the casserole blew up and we had to raise the cook's wages," said Hermione.

"It's all the fault of that infernal Pilot-fish and his swab-headed, swivel-eyed Finn..." stormed Bell, oblivious to all attempts at restraint. "How in the deuce am I goin' to cook a dish requirin' care and watchfulness with all hands, cook, scullion..."

"...and yourself..."

"... and myself, then, breaking for the rail every time some square-head for'ard sights a fishin' boat? That's the way the salt-cellar got ... lost. I set it down on the crust for a second to take a look, and it got drawn in, like ... like..."

"Like it might have in any other quicksand," supplied Hermione.

No fear nor respect of the host could drown the roar which followed and stifled echoes of which appeared to come from the pantry, whither the steward had fled. Bell was, however, furious.

"Steward..." he bawled. The unhappy man appeared, saddened, to judge by the funereal expression of his face, and the tears still brimming in his eyes.

"Take this dish forward," said Bell, with great dignity, "and present it, with my compliments, to Captain Heldstrom and the mate."

"How about the corroded top of that salt-cellar, papa?" asked Paula. "Might not that be poisonous?"

"It doesn't need the salt-cellar..." Hermione whispered to the writhing Mr. Poole.

"That may be so ... that may be so," Bell assented. "Wonder none of the rest of you had the wit to think of it. Steward..."

"Sir..."

"Carry the blamed thing up and heave it overboard." Bell glared savagely about him. "There's a whole morning's work and two fine chickens ... no, three..."

"Three!"

"Yes. The first one I accidentally dropped overboard while looking for the Pilot-fish. Curse the Pilot-fish ... I say, curse him. It's all his fault. He has got this whole ship's company going all ways at once like a school o' gallied whales. I'll fix him. I'll lead him a chase. I'll wear him out, confound him, or know the reason why. Wants to follows us, does he? Right-o! I'll keep him on the trot till his tongue hangs out."

"How?" asked Cécile.

"By keepin' him on the move. We'll lead him a chase from Cape Race to Key West and never give him a chance to eat. Who wants to bet me that he'll be with us at the end of a fortnight? Come with us, Wood; you've got nothin' to do and I'll show you some fun; a sort of chasse-à-courre. Will you come?"

"Oh, do, Huntington," Paula cried. Wood glanced at Cécile.

"Do come, if it would amuse you," said she.

"Who wants to bet me that this chump will still be in the hunt two weeks from now?" cried Bell. "What! no takers?"

"Wait until we start," said Hermione.