rd to the vague magic land
of adventure, where she was to win treasure and delight, fortune and
fame; backward to a big, lovely, splendid house in New York City, where
a certain tall young man, with brown, unruly hair and shoulders broad
as a sheltering wall, must be pining for her.

Some one began whistling in the cabin. Pauline paid no attention to it
at first, but as the tune suddenly shifted to the very latest musical
comedy air she became interested. Owen never whistled, and Hicks, she
imagined, seldom went to the theatres.

The song shifted from whistle to words:

"I'm a greatly wicked person. If there's anybody worse on This
terrestrial circumference of guile (Though I very broadly doubt it) I
should like to know about it, For I want to be the blackest thing on
file.

"I'm a bad-mad-man, my dear, I'm a liar and a flyer and flirty
buccaneer. I've done everything that's awful that a human being can.
I'm a bad--ma-a-d man."

"The song from 'Polly Peek-a-boo.' Harry and I heard it only two weeks
ago," mused Pauline.

Moved by a sudden whimsy, she entered the cabin. There was no one
there but the cook. In his dingy linen suit he was standing at the
table peeling potatoes and whistling. He stopped as Pauline entered, a
tall powerful man, though of slouching posture, he bowed
deferentially.

"No like me sing--no sing," he suggested.

"On the contrary, I like it very much. You sing very well indeed,
Filipo. Would you mind telling me where you heard the song you were
just singing?"

"Big American man, up Nassau--he sing'um. Very fine man--big fool
daughter," replied Filipo.

"You speak very good English when you sing," remarked Pauline. "Why
don't you do it all the time?"

The cook hesitated.

"Speak good English all time--bad English when sing!"

Pauline began to scrutinize half suspiciously this remarkable menial,
but he kept stolidly at work at the potatoes, and his dark skin, his
scraggly beard, his bagging trousers upturned over bare feet, his
general dilapidation of appearance, proved him nothing but one of the
common derelicts of the languid islands.

"If you could peel potatoes instead of butchering them, there would be
a little more to eat in case we run out of supplies, Filipo," suggested
Pauline.

He turned on her a frank American grin. For an instant the twinkle in
the keen blue eyes upset her.

It was so, like the twinkle in a pair of keen blue eyes that were
supposed to be