dame aft. I've been making tea
and toast for her."

"Well, you act as if it was the first woman you'd ever seen. What's the
special excitement about a skirt going along as passenger?"

"She wa'n't expected to be aboard. I heard the old man talking with her.
The flash gent that's passenger has rung her in somehow. I didn't get
all the drift be-cause the old man only sort of purred while I was in
hearing distance. But I caught enough to know that it ain't according to
schedule."

"Good looker?" The engineer was showing a bit of interest.

"She sure is!" declared the cook, demonstrating that one eye is as
handy, sometimes, as two. "Peaches and cream, molasses-candy hair, hands
as white as pastry flour. Looks good enough to eat."

"Nobody would ever guess you are a cook, hearing you describe a girl,"
sneered the engineer.

"There's a mystery about her. I heard her kind of taking on before the
dude hushed her up. She was saying something about being sorry that she
had come, and that she wished she was back, and that she had always
done things on the impulse, and didn't stop to think, and so forth, and
couldn't the ship be turned around."

Mayo forgot himself. He stopped coiling ropes and stood there and
listened eagerly until the cook's indignant eye chanced to take a swing
in his direction.

"Do you see who's standing there butting in on the private talk of two
gents?" he asked the engineer. "Hand me that grate-poker--the hot one.
I'll show that nigger where he belongs."

But Mayo retreated in a hurry, knowing that he was not permitted to
protest either by word or by look. However, the cook had given him
something else besides an insult--he had retailed gossip which kept the
young man's thoughts busy.

In spite of his rather contemptuous opinion of the wit of a girl who
would hazard such a silly adventure, he found himself pitying her
plight, guessing that she was really sorry. But as to what was going on
in the master's cabin he had no way of ascertaining. He wondered whether
Captain Downs would marry the couple in such equivocal fashion.

At any rate, pondered Mayo, how did it happen to be any affair of his?
He had troubles enough of his own to occupy his sole attention.

Their spanking wind from the sou'west let go just as dusk shut down. A
yellowish scud dimmed the stars. Mayo heard one of the mates say that
the glass had dropped. He smelled nasty weather himself, having the
sailor's keen instinct. The to