ck's voice exploding in amazement.
'_What's_ that gel's name, Madeline? _What'd_ you call her?' And a voice
as clear, as soft and as pure as a silver bell answered:

"'Artemisia Macedoine, Captain. That's my name.'"

CHAPTER II

And though things do happen like that sometimes, as I sat in my chair,
quite innocently alongside the Captain's ventilator, and sucked at my
cigar, I was taken aback. It was like a voice coming up from the
tomb--the tomb of a buried past. In a way it was a relief, for I was
becoming so involved in Jack's domestic life that I was losing touch
with the outside world altogether. The sound of that name recalled to me
my old, unregenerate, wandering self. I had not forgotten him. One never
forgets a master of illusion, such as he surely was. But the very
existence of so imaginative a man seemed doubtful in the company of
matter-of-fact, open-minded, good old honest Jack. Jack's lack of the
power of dissembling and allusion was devastating. He had no more
_nuance_, as the French say, than a fog-horn. Think of a man who could
say to the wife of his bosom, the goddess before whom he worshipped with
preposterous self-abasement--'One word, and home you go!' Jack would
have had one word for Macedoine and one only--Faker. But I have found,
in the course of my rolling existence, that fakers are often more
interesting, intrinsically, than careful, honest men.

"And I had heard, in a round-about way, some years before, that Captain
Macedoine had not only been an illustrious faker but a fairly competent
swindler as well. We were discharging machinery and stores at Cristobal,
when a young chap who'd been Junior Fourth in the old Maracaibo Line
came aboard and had a chat. He was one of those who hadn't gone home.
Indeed, he was able to take out his final papers--never mind how--as
soon as he was paid off, and being a decent young chap, fairly clever
and a good mixer, he had soon gotten a billet in the Canal Zone. For
some reason or other he had liked me when we were shipmates. I
remembered him as having no aptitude for the sea. He had a sweet-heart
in England he was always talking about, but he married in the States, of
course. Well, young Cotter, with his little waxed moustache and his
superior bank clerk's manner, walked aboard, shook me warmly by the
hand, and gave me an immense quantity of miscellaneous news. What with
the Yucatan ships calling three or four times a week, Cotter was up to
date wit