t
wig-wagging a message to an imaginary pair of violet eyes--for man can
be silly and serious at one and the same time--when a little puff of hot
air struck my face. It was the second puff of this kind I had noticed.
Gates now came up and joined me.

"There's a howl of something coming, sir," he said. "I've had suspicions
of it all day, but now the barometer's touched bottom."

"The sky's clear," I suggested.

He laughed, though without humor.

"A sky isn't always clear because there're no clouds in it, Mr. Jack."

"But what do you expect, Gates? We don't have storms at this season!"

"You're right, sir. But once in a long while there'll be a howler, and
that's what the barometer is trying to tell us now. As we have only harf
a crew on each yacht I think we'd better make a bee-line in. 'Twill take
us twenty miles north of where we were, and those fellows carn't see
us."

I never disputed conditions of weather with Gates, so the course was
changed and we started on our run to land, which he thought might be
reached by dark. In this he was right, for as the sun, like a strangely
weird greenish ball, touched the horizon our prow, leading the _Orchid_
by half a mile, entered the protecting waters of Big Cove.

Just at this moment Bilkins dashed up from the cabin, looking scared and
yelling:

"He won't stay quiet, sirs; I can't make him!"

We would have thought a delirium had seized the big black had not he
then appeared from the same doorway, regarding us with an air of
rationality. I have never seen a smile more broad, or more expressive of
relief. It simply radiated happiness, and Tommy, staring at him, began
to hum a song that had cheered us many a time in the trenches.

"By Jingo, Tommy," I cried, "we'll name him that!"

And thus he was christened Smiles--which, however, through some fatuous
process of fabrication so soon grew to Smilax, that as Smilax he shall
henceforth be known.

The frown of displeasure that had gathered on Monsieur's brow fled as
the fellow spoke. For he did speak, telling in his own style that the
concussion had been a mere bagatelle, that his faculties had returned
quite unimpaired after their brief absence, and that he was hungry but
ready to serve us. What he did actually say to express this--to which
the professor would have devoted five whole minutes of scientific
phrasing--was:

"Me well."

Monsieur sprang forward and imperiously commanded him to sit facing the
western gl