, shifting his shoulder from the rail, looked
vaguely over the deck of _The Aloha_, sighed contentedly, and smiled
back at her. No one else, it appeared, would have tea; and there was
none to regret it.

St. George's cursory inspection had revealed the others variously
absorbed, though they were now all agreed in breathing easily since
Barnay, interlarding rational speech with Irishisms of thanksgiving,
had announced five minutes before that the fires were up and that in
half an hour _The Aloha_ might weigh anchor. The only thing now left
to desire was to slip clear of the shadow of the black reaches of
Yaque, shouldering the blue.

Meanwhile, Antoinette and Amory sat in the comparative seclusion of
the bow with their backs to the forward deck, and it was definitely
manifest to every one how it would be with them, but every one was
simply glad and dismissed the matter with that. Mr. Frothingham, in
his steamer chair, looked like a soft collapsible tube of something;
Bennietod, at ease upon the uncovered boards of the deck, was
circumspectly having cheese sandwiches and wastefully shooting the
ship's rockets into the red sunset, in general celebration; and
Rollo, having taken occasion respectfully to submit to whomsoever it
concerned that fact is ever stranger than fiction, had gone below.
Mr. Otho Holland and Little Cawthorne--but their smiles were like
different names for the same thing--were toasting each other in
something light and dry and having a bouquet which Mr. Holland, who
ought to know, compared favourably with certain vintages of 1000
B.C. In a hammock near them reclined Mrs. Medora Hastings, holding
two kinds of smelling salts which invariably revived her simply by
inducing the mental effort of deciding which was the better. Her
hair, which was exceedingly pretty, now rippled becomingly about her
flushed face and was guiltless of side-combs--she had lost them both
down a chasm in that headlong flight from the cliff's summit, and
they irrecoverably reposed in the bed of some brook of the Miocene
period. And Mrs. Hastings, her hand in that of her brother, lay in
utter silence, smiling up at him in serene content.

For King Otho of Yaque was turning his back upon his island domain
for ever. In that hurried flight across the Eurychorus among his
distracted subjects, his resolution had been taken. Jarvo and Akko,
the adieux to whom had been every one's sole regret in leaving the
island, had miraculously foun