"Oh, no! Impossible!" Mr. Gilman defended himself, pained by the charge.

"She's hard on, anyhow, sir. And many a good yacht's left her bones on this
Buxey."

"But you gave me the course," protested Mr. Gilman, with haughtiness.

Captain Wyatt bent down and looked at the binnacle. He was contentedly
aware that the compass of a yacht hard aground cannot lie and cannot be
made to lie. The camera can lie; the speedometer of an automobile after an
accident can lie--or can conceal the truth and often does, but the compass
of a yacht aground is insusceptible to any blandishment; it shows the
course at the moment of striking and nothing will persuade it to alter its
evidence.

"What course did I give you, sir?" asked Captain Wyatt.

And as Mr. Gilman hesitated in his reply, the skipper pointed silently to
the compass.

"Where's the chart? Let me see the chart," said Mr. Gilman with sudden
majesty.

The chart in its little brass frame was handy. Mr. Gilman examined it in a
hostile manner; one might say that he cross-examined it, and with it the
horizon. "Ah!" he muttered at length, peering at the print under the chart,
"'Corrected 1906.' Out of date. Pity they don't re-issue these charts
oftener."

His observations had no relation whatever to the matter in hand; considered
as a contribution to the unravelling of the matter in hand they were merely
idiotic. Nevertheless, such were the exact words he uttered, and he
appeared to get great benefit and solace from them. They somehow enabled
him to meet, quite satisfactorily, the gaze of his guests who had now
gathered in the vicinity of the wheel.

Audrey alone showed a desire to move away from the wheel. The fact was that
the skipper had glanced at her in a peculiar way and his eyes had seemed to
say, with disdain: "Women! Women again!" Nothing but that! The
implications, however, were plain. Audrey may have been discountenanced by
the look in the captain's eyes, but at the same time she had an inward
pride, because it was undeniable that Mr. Gilman, owing to his extreme and
agitated interest in herself, had put the yacht off the course and was
thereby imperilling numerous lives. Audrey liked that. And she exonerated
Mr. Gilman, and she hated the captain for daring to accuse him, and she
mysteriously nursed the wounded dignity of Mr. Gilman far better than he
could nurse it himself.

Her feelings were assuredly complex, and they grew more complex when the
sense of d