away and below and back in a trice, in her hand a
part glass of water into which she stirred a teaspoonful of cream of
tartar.

"Drink it," she ordered, as a matter of course.

I drank it. And at eleven in the morning she came up to my deck-chair
with a second dose of the stuff. Also she reproached me soundly for
permitting Wada to feed meat to Possum. It was from her that Wada and I
learned how mortal a sin it was to give meat to a young puppy.
Furthermore, she laid down the law and the diet for Possum, not alone to
me and Wada, but to the steward, the carpenter, and Mr. Mellaire. Of the
latter two, because they ate by themselves in the big after-room and
because Possum played there, she was especially suspicious; and she was
outspoken in voicing her suspicions to their faces. The carpenter
mumbled embarrassed asseverations in broken English of past, present, and
future innocence, the while he humbly scraped and shuffled before her on
his huge feet. Mr. Mellaire's protestations were of the same nature,
save that they were made with the grace and suavity of a Chesterfield.

In short, Possum's diet raised quite a tempest in the _Elsinore_ teapot,
and by the time it was over Miss West had established this particular
contact with me and given me a feeling that we were the mutual owners of
the puppy. I noticed, later in the day, that it was to Miss West that
Wada went for instructions as to the quantity of warm water he must use
to dilute Possum's condensed milk.

Lunch won my continued approbation of the cook. In the afternoon I made
a trip for'ard to the galley to make his acquaintance. To all intents he
was a Chinese, until he spoke, whereupon, measured by speech alone, he
was an Englishman. In fact, so cultured was his speech that I can fairly
say it was vested with an Oxford accent. He, too, was old, fully
sixty--he acknowledged fifty-nine. Three things about him were markedly
conspicuous: his smile, that embraced all of his clean-shaven Asiatic
face and Asiatic eyes; his even-rowed, white, and perfect teeth, which I
deemed false until Wada ascertained otherwise for me; and his hands and
feet. It was his hands, ridiculously small and beautifully modelled,
that led my scrutiny to his feet. They, too, were ridiculously small and
very neatly, almost dandifiedly, shod.

We had put the pilot off at midday, but the _Britannia_ towed us well
into the afternoon and did not cast us off until the ocean was wide