water under the summer sun. The launch was rushing headlong through its
own white surge towards the largest of these majestic toys. As it
approached the string Mr. Prohack saw that all the yachts were much
larger than he imagined, and that the largest was enormous. The launch
flicked itself round the stern of that yacht, upon which Mr. Prohack
read the word "Northwind" in gold, and halted bobbing at a staircase
whose rails were white ropes, slung against a dark blue wall; the wall
was the side of the yacht. Mr. Prohack climbed out of the bobbing
launch, and the staircase had the solidity under his feet of masonry on
earth. High up, glancing over the wall, was a capped face.

"How d'ye do, skipper," called Charlie, and when he had got his parent
on to the deck, he said: "Skipper, this is my father. Dad--Captain
Crowley."

Mr. Prohack shook hands with a short, stoutish nervous man with an
honest, grim, marine face.

"Everything all right?"

"Yes, sir. Glad you've come at last, sir."

"Good!"

Charlie turned away from the captain to his father. Mr. Prohack saw a
man hauling a three-cornered flag up the chief of the three masts which
the ship possessed, and another man hauling a large oblong flag up a
pole at the stern.

"What is the significance of this flag-raising?" asked Mr. Prohack.

"The significance is that the owner has come aboard," Charlie replied,
not wholly without self-consciousness. "Come on. Have a look at her.
Come on, skipper. Do the honours. She used to be a Mediterranean trader.
The former owner turned her into a yacht. He says she cost him a hundred
thousand by the time she was finished. I can believe it."

Mr. Prohack also believed it, easily; he believed it more and more
easily as he was trotted from deck to deck and from bedroom to bedroom,
and sitting-room to sitting-room, and library to smoking-room, and
music-room to lounge, and especially from bathroom to bathroom. In no
land habitation had Mr. Prohack seen so many, or such marmoreal, or such
luxurious bathrooms. What particularly astonished Mr. Prohack was the
exceeding and minute finish of everything, and what astonished him even
more than the finish was the cleanliness of everything.

"Dirty place to be in, sir, Southampton," grinned the skipper. "We do
the best we can."

They reached the dining-room, an apartment in glossy bird's-eye maple
set in the midst of the virgin-white promenade deck.

"By the way, lunch, please," said