man who is expected to obey without asking the reason why.     

       That cruise seemed to be a series of spasmodic alternations between leisurely loafing and hustling haste.     

       There were days when he was ordered to amble along at half speed offshore. Then for hours together Julius Marston and his two especial and close companions, men of affairs, plainly, men of his kind, bunched themselves close together in their hammock chairs under the poop awning and talked interminably. Alma Marston and her young friends, chaperoned by an amiable aunt—so Captain Mayo understood her status in the party—remained considerately away from the earnest group of three. Arthur Beveridge attached himself to the young folks.     

       From the bridge the captain caught glimpses of all this shipboard routine. The yacht's saunterings offshore seemed a part of the summer vacation.     

       But the occasional hurryings into harbors, the conferences below with men who came and went with more or less attempt at secrecy, did not fit with the vacation side of the cruise.     

       These conferences were often followed by orders to the captain to thread inner reaches of the coast and to visit unfrequented harbors.     

       Captain Mayo had been prepared for these trips, although he had not been informed of the reason. It was his first season on the yacht Olenia. The shipping broker who had hired him had been searching in his inquiries as to Mayo's knowledge of the byways of the coast. The young man who had captained fishermen and coasters ever since he was seventeen years old had found it easy to convince the shipping broker, and the shipping broker had sent him on board the yacht without the formality of an interview with the owner.     

       Mayo was informed curtly that there was no need of an interview. He was told that Julius Marston never bothered with details.     

       When Julius Marston had come on board with his party he merely nodded grim acknowledgment of the salute of his yacht's master, who stood at the gangway, cap in hand.     

       The owner had never shown any interest in the management of the yacht; he had remained abaft the main gangway; he had never called the 

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