of the wildest quests ever undertaken by an amateur, and that none watched him go with greater interest than his friend Murray, of Scotland Yard. But such was the naked truth. And even Murray had but a tithe of the secret.

A long, wicked-looking yacht! I liked to hear my friends say that. When I took them aboard and showed them the monster turbines, the spacious quarters for my men beneath the cupola of the bows, and aft, my own cabins, furnished with some luxury and no little taste, I hope—then it was of the Hotel Ritz they talked, and not of any wickedness at all. My own private room was just such a cabin as I have always desired to find upon a yacht. Deep sloping windows of heavy glass permitted me to see the white foaming wake astern and the blue horizon above it. I had to my hand the books that I love; there were pictures of my own choosing cunningly let into the panels of rich Spanish mahogany. Ornaments of silver added dignity but no display. Not a spacious room, I found that its situation abaft gave me that privacy I sought, and made of it as it were a house apart. Here none entered who had not satisfied my little Jap that his business was urgent. I could write for hours with no more harassing interruption than that of a gull upon the wing or the echo of the ship’s bells heard afar. The world of men and cities lay down yonder below the ether. The great sea shut its voices out, and who would regret them or turn back to hear their message?

Let pride in my ship, then, be the first emotion I shall record in this account of her voyages. Certainly the summer smiled upon us when we started down the turbid, evil-smelling river Tyne, and began to dip our whale-nosed bows to the North Sea. The men I had shipped for the service, attracted by the terms of my offer, and drawn from the cream of the yachting ports of England, were as fine a lot as ever trod a spotless deck. Benson, my chief engineer, used to be one of Yarrow’s most trusted experts. Captain Larry had been almost everything nautical, both afloat and ashore. A clean-shaven, blue-eyed, hard-faced man, I have staked my fortune upon his courage. And how shall I forget Cain and Abel, the breezy twin quartermasters from County Cork—to say nothing of Balaam, the Scotch boatswain, or Merry, the little cockney cook! These fellows had been taken aside and told one by one frankly that the voyage spelled danger, and after danger, reward. They accepted my conditions with a frankness which declared their relish for them. I had but three refusals, and one of these, Harry Avenhill, had no title to be a chooser.

Such was the crew which steamed with me, away from 

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