buckets of water against the panes.  

"Couldn't get to sleep unless I heard the sea breaking against the scuttles," he explained.  

Dacres wondered whether the call of the sea would come back to him with such vividness. Perhaps; but up to the present he felt no such overwhelming desire. It was just possible that he had not yet had time to realize his position.  

In the midst of his meditation the traveller remembered that he had to catch a train.  

Pulling out his watch he found that he had fifteen minutes to get to the station and, since he did the outward journey in ten minutes, it was an easy jaunt back to the junction.  

"Where are you for?" asked a porter as Dacres arrived on the practically deserted platform.  

"Holmsley."  

"Your train's just gone, sir," announced the railway employee with the air of a man who has imparted a joyful surprise.  

"But——" Dacres pulled out the envelope. "I thought it went at seven-four."  

"Did till this month, sir," was the unconcerned reply. "Now it leaves here at six-fifty-six. Next train at eight-two."  

"They must have had an old time-table in that restaurant," muttered Dacres disgustedly. "I was a bit of an ass not to make sure, and a doubly confounded idiot not to have asked when I arrived here. However, can't be helped. 'What's done can't be undone,' as the landlubber remarked when he tied a slippery hitch in his hammock lashing and found himself sprawling on the mess-deck ten seconds later. This time I keep watch here, I don't mean to be let down a second time."  

When a fast train bringing the evening papers from London stopped at the station Dacres hurried to buy a copy. The news as far as the airship was concerned was woefully disappointing. She had not been sighted anywhere in Great Britain or Ireland.  

There was one item of news that interested him, however. It was a wireless message from Cape Columbia, announcing that Lieutenant Cardyke and four men of the British Arctic Expedition had started on their dash for the North Pole.  

"Plucky chap!" ejaculated Dacres. "I hope he'll pull it off all right. It's a jolly risky business, though. Never fancied that kind 

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