he crystal flood of the moon, he easily reaffirmed from it his
knowledge of the yacht's position. Nothing could be close by but
scattered huts and such wreckage as that looming palely above the
oleanders.

Yet a woman had unquestionably appeared swimming from behind the point
of land off the bow of the _Gar_. The women native to the locality,
and the men, too, were fanatical in the avoidance of any unnecessary
exterior application of water. His thoughts moved in a monotonous
circle, while the enveloping radiance constantly increased. It became
as light as a species of unnatural day, where every leaf was clearly
revealed but robbed of all color and familiar meaning.

He grew restless, and rose, making his way forward about the
narrow deck-space outside the cabin. Halvard was seated on a coil
of rope beside the windlass and stood erect as Woolfolk approached.
The sailor was smoking a short pipe, and the bowl made a crimson spark
in his thick, powerful hand. John Woolfolk fingered the wood
surface of the windlass bitts and found it rough and gummy.
Halvard said instinctively:

"I'd better start scraping the mahogany tomorrow, it's getting
white."

Woolfolk nodded. Halvard was a good man. He had the valuable quality
of commonly anticipating spoken desires. He was a Norwegian, out of
the Lofoden Islands, where sailors are surpassingly schooled in the
Arctic seas. Poul Halvard, so far as Woolfolk could discover, was
impervious to cold, to fatigue, to the insidious whispering of mere
flesh. He was a man without temptation, with an untroubled allegiance
to a duty that involved an endless, exacting labor; and for those
reasons he was austere, withdrawn from the community of more fragile
and sympathetic natures. At times his inflexible integrity oppressed
John Woolfolk. Halvard, he thought, was a difficult man to live up
to.

He turned and absently surveyed the land. His restlessness increased.
He felt a strong desire for a larger freedom of space than that
offered by the _Gar_, and it occurred to him that he might go ashore
in the tender. He moved aft with this idea growing to a determination.
In the cabin, on the shelf above the berths built against the sides of
the ketch, he found an old blue flannel coat, with crossed squash
rackets and a monogram embroidered in yellow on the breast pocket.
Slipping it on, he dropped over the stern of the tender.

Halvard came instantly aft, but Woolfolk declined the mutely offered
s