e ventilator seemed to have ceased.

Far down in the ship, in a breathless little cabin far aft, the Red
Un kicked the Purser's boy and cried himself to sleep.

V

The old ship made a record the next night that lifted the day's run
to four hundred and twenty. She was not a greyhound, you see.
Generally speaking, she was a nine-day boat. She averaged well under
four hundred miles. The fast boats went by her and slid over the
edge of the sea, throwing her bits of news by wireless over a
shoulder, so to speak.

The little girl's mother was not a good sailor. She sat almost all
day in a steamer chair, reading or looking out over the rail. Each
day she tore off the postal from the top of her menu and sent it to
the girl's father. She missed him more than she had expected. He had
become a habit; he was solid, dependable, loyal. He had never heard
of the Chief.

"Dear Daddy," she would write: "Having a splendid voyage so far, but
wish you were here. The baby is having such a good time--so popular;
and won two prizes to-day at the sports! With love, Lily."

They were all rather like that. She would drop them in the mailbox,
with a tug of tenderness for the man who worked at home. Then she
would go back to her chair and watch the sea, and recall the heat of
the engine room below, and wonder, wonder----

It had turned warm again; the edges of the horizon were grey and at
night a low mist lay over the water. Rooms were stifling, humid. The
Red Un discarded pajamas and slept in his skin. The engine-room
watch came up white round the lips and sprawled over the boat deck
without speech. Things were going wrong in the Red Un's small world.
The Chief hardly spoke to him--was grave and quiet, and ate almost
nothing. The Red Un hated himself unspeakably and gave his share of
the sovereign to the Purser's boy.

The Chief was suffering from lack of exercise in the air as well as
other things. The girl's mother was not sleeping--what with heat and
the memories the sea had revived. On the fifth night out, while the
ship slept, these two met on the deck in the darkness--two shadows
out of the past. The deck was dark, but a ray from a window touched
his face and she knew him. He had not needed light to know her;
every line of her was written on his heart, and for him there was no
one at home to hold in tenderness.

"I think I knew you were here all the time," she said, and held out
both hands.

The Chief took one and dropped it