the lower deck. Mr. Boyle was waiting there, holding a lantern.

"Huh!" he growled, when he saw her, "p'raps you'll believe what I tell
you before your hair turns gray, if not sooner. Luck! Did any man
ever have such luck as the skipper? Why, if he fell off Mong Blong
he'd find a circus net rigged up to catch him."

"I agree with you so fully, Mr. Boyle," she whispered, "that I am going
to marry him."

"I guessed as much," he answered. "At any rate I fancied it wouldn't
be for want of axing on his part." He whirled off into a tempest of
wrath because a sailor beneath had failed to keep a guide-rope taut.
The occupants of the boats might have saved his life, but he would let
them know that he was still chief officer for all that.

At last he stooped and gave his hand to some one who emerged from the
darkness beneath.

"Glad to see you again, Miss Baring," he said gruffly. "And you, Mrs.
Somerville. And you, sir," to the missionary. "We thought you'd gone
under, an' good folks are scarce enough as it is."

It was a wan and broken-spirited Isobel whom Elsie led to her cabin,
but notwithstanding her wretched state, her eyes quickly took in the
orderly condition of the room.

"I left my clothes strewed all over the floor," she said, with a
nervousness which Elsie attributed to the hardships she had undergone.
"Why did you trouble to pack them away?"

Then Elsie told her of her hunt for the poudriere, and was so obviously
unconcerned about any incident other than the adventures they had both
experienced since they parted, that Isobel questioned her no further.
A bath and a change of clothing worked marvels. Though thin and weak
for want of proper food, neither Isobel nor Mrs. Somerville had
suffered in health from the exposure and short fare involved by life on
the island. It was broad daylight ere they could be persuaded to
retire to rest, there was so much to tell and to hear.

Meanwhile, the meeting between Tollemache and Gray was full of racial
subtleties.

Tollemache, stepping forward to grasp Gray's hand, felt it was
incumbent on him to utter the first word.

"Had a pretty rotten time of it, I expect?" said he.

"Poisonous. And you?"

"Oh, fair. Beastly close squeak when you turned up."

Gray became more explicit when Courtenay met him in the chart-room,
where the table had to be cleared of debris before some glasses and a
couple of bottles of champagne could be staged.

"When those black