ike a banjo. Now
I'll play it, if you'll stop talking."

Kirk did, and the mate began to play. His music was untaught, and he
himself had made up the strange airs he played. They sighed fitfully
through the little cabin like the rush of wind and water without;
blended with it, mingled with the hundred little voices of the ship. The
_Celestine_ slipped on up the coast, singing softly to herself, and Kirk
fell asleep with the undulating wail of the violin and the whisper of
water filling his half-awakened senses.

He woke abruptly, much later, and called for Felicia suddenly; then,
recollecting hazily where he was, for Mr. Martin. Hearing no sound, he
was frightened, and cried out in remembered terror.

"Steady!" said the mate's voice. "What's the trouble?"

"I don't know," said Kirk. "I--I think I need to talk to somebody. There
hasn't been anybody for so long."

"Well, go ahead," said the mate. "I'm in my bunk. If you think there's
room enough, I'll put you in here. More sociable, rather."

There was not much room, but Kirk was so thankful to clasp a human being
once more, that he did not care how narrow the quarters might be. He put
his cheek against the mate's arm, and they lay silent, the man very
stiff and unyielding. "The Maestro would like to hear you play," Kirk
murmured. "He loves queer tunes like that. He even likes the ones I make
up."

"Oh, you make up tunes, do you?"

"Little ones. But he makes wonderful ones,--and he plays wonderfully,
too."

"Who?"

"The Maestro."

"Who's he?"

Kirk told him--at great length. He likewise unburdened his heart, which
had been steeped so long in loneliness and terror, and recounted the
wonder and beauty of Applegate Farm, and Felicia and Ken, and the model
ship, and the Maestro's waiting garden, and all that went to make up his
dear, familiar world, left so long ago, it seemed.

"But," he said rather mournfully, "I don't know whether I shall ever see
any of them again, if we just keep on sailing and sailing. Are you going
back to South America again?"

The mate laughed a little. "No," he said. "The _Celestine's_ going to
Bedford. We can't put her off her course to drop you at Asquam--harbor's
no good, anyhow. My time's up when she docks. I'll take you home."

"Have you always been mate of the _Celestine_?" Kirk inquired.

"I have not," said Mr. Martin. "I signed aboard of her at Rio this trip,
to get up into the Christian world again. I've been deckhand a