oes the brave one admire my sarong?" the small voice wavered.

"It shames my ugly body," said Peter. "Now run along to bed--_kalak_!"
And he clapped his hands as the small figure bobbed out of sight, with
her long, black pigtail flopping this way and that.

CHAPTER VI

It came to Peter as he climbed up the iron-fretted steps to the lonely
promenade-deck that life had begun to take on its old golden glow, the
luster of the uncertain, the charm of women who found in him something
not undesirable.

At this he smiled a little bit. He had never known, as far back as the
span of his adventures extended, a woman who deemed his companionship
as quite so valuable a thing as the mysterious and alluring Romola
Borria, the husband-beaten, incredible, and altogether dangerous young
woman who passionately besought him to accompany her on a pilgrimage of
forgetfulness into the flowery heart of dear old Japan.

Ascending the ladder to the unoccupied deck, he was conscious of the
sweet drone of the monsoon, which blew off the shores of Annam over the
restless bosom of the China Sea, setting up a tuneful chant in the
_Persian Gulf's_ sober rigging, and kissing his cheeks with the ardor
of a despairing maiden.

Peter the Brazen decided to take a turn or two round deck before going
to his bunk, to drink in a potion of this intoxicating, winelike night.
The wheel of fortune might whirl many times before he was again sailing
this most seductive of oceans.

And he was a little intoxicated, too, with the wine of his youth. His
lips, immersed in the fountain, found very little bitterness there.
Life was earnest and grave, as the wiseacres said; but life was, on the
whole, sublime and poignantly sweet. A little bitterness, a little
dreary sadness, a pang at the heart now and again, served only to
interrupt the smooth regularity, the monotony, to add zest to the
nectar.

When he had finished the cigarette, he flung the butt over the rail
into the gushing water, which swam south in its phosphorescent welter,
descended between decks to the stateroom that had been assigned to him,
and fitted the key to the lock.

He felt decidedly young and foolishly exalted as he closed the door
after him and heard the lock click, for to few men is it given to have
two lovely young women in distress seek aid, all in the span of a few
hours. Perhaps these rosy events had served merely to feed oil to the
fires of his conceit; but Peter's was not