ship! Why, Cap., you're
a treasure in yourself for a fellow looking for stories."

Then after the notes were taken and the story talked over, Captain
Jack, especially if the day happened to be Sunday, would insist upon
their staying to dinner--boiled beef and cabbage, smoking coffee and
pickles--that K. D. B. served in the little, brick-paved kitchen in the
back of the station. The crew messed in their quarters overhead.

K. D. B. herself was not uninteresting. Her respectability incased her
like armor plate, and she never laughed without putting three fingers
to her lips. She told them that she had at one time been a "costume
reader."

"A costume reader?"

"Yes; reading extracts from celebrated authors in the appropriate
costume of the character. It used to pay very well, and it was very
refined. I used to do 'In a Balcony,' by Mister Browning, and 'Laska,'
the same evening! and it always made a hit. I'd do 'In a Balcony'
first, and I'd put on a Louis-Quinze-the-fifteenth gown and
wig-to-match over a female cowboy outfit. When I'd finished 'In a
Balcony,' I'd do an exit, and shunt the gown and wig-to-match, and come
on as 'Laska,' with thunder noises off. It was one of the strongest
effects in my repertoire, and it always got me a curtain call."

And Captain Jack would wag his head and murmur:

"Extraordinary! extraordinary!"

Blix and Condy soon noted that upon the occasion of each one of their
visits, K. D. B. found means to entertain them at great length with
long discussions upon certain subjects of curiously diversified
character. Upon their first visit she elected to talk upon the Alps
mountains. The Sunday following it was bacteriology; on the next
Wednesday it was crystals; while for two hours during their next visit
to the station, Condy and Blix were obliged to listen to K. D. B.'s
interminable discourse on the origin, history, and development of the
kingdom of Denmark. Condy was dumfounded.

"I never met such a person, man or woman, in all my life. Talk about
education! Why, I think she knows everything!"

"In Defiance of Authority" soon began to make good progress, but Condy,
once launched upon technical navigation, must have Captain Jack at his
elbow continually, to keep him from foundering. In some sea novel he
remembered to have come across the expression "garboard streak," and
from the context guessed it was to be applied to a detail of a vessel's
construction. In an unguarded