u're gone." She
came closer and placed a hand on his arm. "Please come," she said.
"Just to please me."

Gregory had no alternative. Leaving word with one of the night men to
send him any radio despatch at once, he followed Dickie to the beach,
where the service men sat cross-legged about a blazing fire of
drift-wood. Gregory sank to the sand beside the dark mound of dampened
kelp and watched the operations of the chef as he busied himself in
removing the heavy pieces of canvas which covered the sea-grass.

"It's nature's fireless-cooker," explained the girl as she took her
place beside him. "You can cook most anything in an oven like that if
you know how. It's simple enough too. All you have to do is to scoop out
a hole in the sand and line it with rocks to hold in the heat. Then
build your fire and let it burn for a couple of hours to get a good bed
of coals. Cover them with a thin layer of damp kelp and put in the
potatoes. Another layer of sea-weed, then the roasting-ears. After that
come the fish, wrapped in paper. Then the mussels, clams or anything
else you want. When you get them all in, cover the whole thing with a
lot of heavy kelp and batten it down with a big piece of canvas. The
whole trick is knowing just when to open the oven. Nothing can burn so
it's better to leave it too long than to try to hurry things."

Gregory took the tin-plate, piled high with its smoking delicacies, and
leisurely freed a succulent mussel from its shell. As he placed it in
his mouth his eyes lit up with genuine pleasure and the anxious lines
slowly disappeared from his face.

"What do you think of them?"

He could only gasp his appreciation. Dickie smiled at the rapidly
disappearing contents of his plate. He looked like a new man already.
Nothing like a mussel-bake in the open air to make people forget their
troubles.

About the dying drift-wood fire, the service men drew closer together
and began to sing.

"There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams."

As their voices rose above the dull boom of the surf, Gregory's thoughts
turned to the words of the song. The trail had been long. How long and
how devious, he had never quite before realized. Perhaps it was because
he was tired and the firelight made him think. The "land of his dreams"
was still far ahead. Blocked from his vision for the time being by an
intangible something which lay like a dark shadow across the path.