As to Miss Marston, he viewed her frivolity as he did that of the other girls whom he knew; they all had too much time on their hands.     

       “Give the poor devils a chance, Alma. Don't tip 'em upside down,” he advised, testily, when she followed him down the ladder. He stood at the foot and offered his hand, but she leaped down the last two steps and did not accept his assistance. “Now, you have twisted that skipper of ours until he doesn't know north from south.”      

       “I do not care much for your emphasis on the 'now,'” she declared,       indignantly. “You seem to intimate that I am going about the world trying to beguile every man I see.”      

       “That seems to be the popular indoor and outdoor sport for girls in these days,” he returned with good humor. “Just a moment ago you were raising the very devil with that fellow up there with your eyes. Of course, practice makes perfect. But you're a good, kind girl in your heart. Don't make 'em miserable.”      

       Mr. Beveridge's commiseration would have been wasted on Captain Boyd Mayo that evening. The captain snapped off the light in the chart-room as soon as they had departed, and there in the gloom he took his happiness to his heart, even as he had taken her delicious self to his breast. He put up his hands and pressed his face into the palms. He inhaled the delicate, subtle fragrance—a mere suggestion of perfume—the sweet ghost of her personality, which she had left behind. Her touch still thrilled him, and the warmth of her last kiss was on his lips.     

       Then he went out and climbed the ladder to the bridge. A peep over the shoulder of the man at the wheel into the mellow glow under the hood of the binnacle, showed him that the Olenia was on her course.     

       “It's a beautiful night, Mr. McGaw,” he said to the mate, a stumpy little man with bowed legs, who was pacing to and fro, measuring strides with the regularity of a pendulum.     

       “It is that, sir!”      

       Mr. McGaw, before he answered, plainly had difficulty with something which bulged in his cheek. He appeared, also, to be considerably surprised by the captain's air of vivacious gaiety. His superior had been moping around the ship for many days with melancholy 

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