, his head just visible in the bows. We had started from
what appeared to be the head of a narrow loch, and were leaving
behind us the lights of a big town. A long frontage of lamp-lit quays
was on our left, with here and there the vague hull of a steamer
alongside. We passed the last of the lights and came out into a
broader stretch of water, when a light breeze was blowing and dark
hills could be seen on either shore.

'I'm lying a little way down the fiord, you see,' said Davies. 'I
hate to be too near a town, and I found a carpenter handy here--There
she is! I wonder how you'll like her!'

I roused myself. We were entering a little cove encircled by trees,
and approaching a light which flickered in the rigging of a small
vessel, whose outline gradually defined itself.

'Keep her off,' said Davies, as we drew alongside.

In a moment he had jumped on deck, tied the painter, and was round at
my end.

'You hand them up,' he ordered, 'and I'll take them.'

It was a laborious task, with the one relief that it was not far to
hand them--a doubtful compensation, for other reasons distantly
shaping themselves. When the stack was transferred to the deck I
followed it, tripping over the flabby meat parcel, which was already
showing ghastly signs of disintegration under the dew. Hazily there
floated through my mind my last embarkation on a yacht; my faultless
attire, the trim gig and obsequious sailors, the accommodation ladder
flashing with varnish and brass in the August sun; the orderly, snowy
decks and basket chairs under the awning aft. What a contrast with
this sordid midnight scramble, over damp meat and littered
packing-cases! The bitterest touch of all was a growing sense of
inferiority and ignorance which I had never before been allowed to
feel in my experience of yachts.

Davies awoke from another reverie over my portmanteau to say,
cheerily: 'I'll just show you round down below first, and then we'll
stow things away and get to bed.'

He dived down a companion ladder, and I followed cautiously. A
complex odour of paraffin, past cookery, tobacco, and tar saluted my
nostrils.

'Mind your head,' said Davies, striking a match and lighting a
candle, while I groped into the cabin. 'You'd better sit down; it's
easier to look round.'

There might well have been sarcasm in this piece of advice, for I
must have cut a ridiculous figure, peering awkwardly and suspiciously
round, with shoulders and head bent to avoid