in
athletics yourself--seems to me I've seen you somewhere too."

"Maybe. My name's Benson."

"I remember--a sprinter. And a good one, too."

"Good enough--with no Wefers or Duffey, or somebody like yourself
around," protested the passenger, but immensely pleased nevertheless to
be identified after so many years. And they were both pleased and
exchanged rapid comment on a dozen incidents of athletic days; and when
two ex-athletes get together they run on interminably.

By and by, but not prematurely, the passenger asked, "But _was_ there a
girl at Zanzibar?"

Kieran made no reply. He seemed to be considering the matter of the
barge. After a time he went to the quarter-rail and gazed forward. He
came back to his bitt. "I thought so. There's one of those wreckers up
ahead. They're always along here--standing by or cruising for any loose
wreckage." He waved his hand toward the reefs. "Look. Where their crests
don't pierce the surface you know they're there by the surf playing over
'em. Where they lie a little deeper the paler green of the sea shows 'em
up. In the deep pockets in between--see?--the sea's of a beautiful deep
blue. That's all easy enough, isn't it, but where the drifting clouds
shut out the sunlight, where the shadows fall it's all of a color, isn't
it? No saying then where it's deep water and where it is shoal. It's the
clouds. If the light was always good, there'd be few wrecks along here.
And"--he waved toward the barge astern--"there she is tied to us. If
this ship piles up on the reefs, she piles up behind us."

"Couldn't they cut her adrift?"

"H-m-m--a drifting barge and the Florida Keys tide-water, where would
she fetch up?" And, after a pause, "no fault of hers either, and that
seems hard, too. But there's that wrecker--listen."

A hailing voice came floating aft to them. "Ain't seen nothing 'long de
way--nothin' to th' east'ard, has you, capt'n?"

"No, I didn't see nothin'. And if I did, d'y' s'pose I'd tell you, you
green-sided, patch-sailed whelp's loafer of a black pirate, do you?"

Without turning their heads Kieran and the passenger could hear their
captain's voice from the bridge, and also without turning their heads
they shortly saw the wrecking schooner slide past their quarter. She
_was_ green-painted and her sails _were_ a scandal, and it _was_ a very
black and big negro who was standing in her waist to catch the reply,
and it was very like their captain to answer as he did.