ian girl was with him in many a
night-watch. Under the stars he could shut his eyes and see her--the
flashing teeth as she grimaced up at the horrified nurse, and the eyes
still rioting after the curved lips were closed. And yet it was not her
beauty. A hundred rosy-marbled nymphs could have paraded the beach in a
thousand silvery dawns and, once out of sight, his heart never quicken
whatever it was--the innocence, the breathing innocence of her, it may
have been that. And yet there was something more. There must have been.
He gave it up, but he knew that if he had been born a girl he, too,
would want to paddle in the sea at dawn."

"A sort of poet?" suggested the passenger.

Kieran shot a side glance at the passenger. "H-m-m--a good thing he
didn't know it if he was. He was irresponsible enough without having
that excuse. If he thought then that it was poetry in him which kept him
hopping about the world, he'd have been no good at all. He did enough
dreaming as it was. It was probably only the discipline of a warship,
of having to do a daily stint, that kept him from loafing all his time
away, for, as maybe I've said, a power used to take hold of him at times
and swing him. An idea would come to him and he'd follow it like a guide
to heaven.

"He wondered what had become of her, and one day, being now free of the
navy, he took a bald-headed schooner out of Portland, Oregon, with a
load of lumber for Callao. Between watches he studied a
Spanish-Without-A-Master for one dollar. The lumber schooner never
reached Callao, but she did make one of those volcanic islands to the
south side of the harbor--piled up there and began to fill, which forced
the crew to leave in a hurry and row into Callao harbor in their
quarter-boat. From Callao the crew took a trolley to Lima to see the
American consul. In Lima they became scattered, and Cogan and an old
fellow named Tommie Jones found themselves together. Cogan had met
Tommie in a restaurant in Portland at about the time Tommie was taking
notice of a tall, well-nourished, red-headed lass waiting on table
there. Tommie was a hearty lad of fifty-four or so, and Cogan had helped
the little romance along, and because of his interest in the case was
how Cogan and Tommie came to ship together. Well, here was Tommie adrift
in Lima after five weeks to sea, and in all that time he hadn't had a
drink, and he wanted one now. He had no money, but Cogan had a
half-dollar, and American silver