she could not remain the woman she had been at
the caves on the coast of Peru. But, do what he would, he could make no
transformation in the picture which was imprinted on the retina of his
soul. There he saw a woman still young, tall, and too thin, in a suit of
blue flannel faded and worn, with her hair bound tightly around her head
and covered by a straw hat with a faded ribbon. But it was toward this
figure that he was sailing, sailing, sailing, as fast as the winds of
heaven would blow his vessel onward.

CHAPTER XLIX

A GOLDEN AFTERNOON

When Ralph met Captain Horn that afternoon, there rose within him a
sudden, involuntary appreciation of the captain's worthiness to possess a
ship-load of gold and his sister Edna. Before that meeting there had been
doubts in the boy's mind in regard to this worthiness. He believed that
he had thoroughly weighed and judged the character and capacities of the
captain of the _Castor_, and he had said to himself, in his moments of
reflection, that although Captain Horn was a good man, and a brave man,
and an able man in many ways, there were other men in the world who were
better fitted for the glorious double position into which this fortunate
mariner had fallen.

But now, as Ralph sat and gazed upon his sister's lover and heard him
talk, and as he turned from him to Edna's glowing eyes, he acknowledged,
without knowing it, the transforming power of those two great
alchemists,--gold and love,--and from the bottom of his heart he approved
the match.

Upon Mrs. Cliff the first sight of Captain Horn had been a little
startling, and had she not hastened to assure herself that the compact
with Edna was a thing fixed and settled, she might have been possessed
with the fear that perhaps this gentleman might have views for his
future life very different from those upon which she had set her heart.
But even if she had not known of the compact of the morning, all danger
of that fear would have passed in the moment that the captain took her
by the hand.

To find his three companions of the wreck and desert in such high state
and flourishing condition so cheered and uplifted the soul of the captain
that he could talk of nothing else. And now he called for Cheditafa and
Mok--those two good fellows whose faithfulness he should never forget.
But when they entered, bending low, with eyes upturned toward the lofty
presence to which they had been summoned, the captain looked inquiringl