megaphone to assistants
who were bending the elements to the need of this particular hazard of
Hortense. He called directions to the men who tugged the rope, to the
men in control of the lights, and to another who seemed to create the
billows. Among other items he wished more action for the boat and more
water for the billows. "See that your tank gets full-up this time,"
he called, whereupon an engine under the scaffold, by means of a large
rubber hose reaching into the pool, began to suck water into the tank
above.

The speaker must be Miss Baxter's director, the enviable personage who
saw her safely through her perils. When one of the turning reflectors
illumined him Merton saw his face of a keen Semitic type. He seemed to
possess not the most engaging personality; his manner was aggressive,
he spoke rudely to his doubtless conscientious employees, he danced
in little rages of temper, and altogether he was not one with whom the
watcher would have cared to come in contact. He wondered, indeed, that
so puissant a star as Beulah Baxter should not be able to choose her own
director, for surely the presence of this unlovely, waspishly tempered
being could be nothing but an irritant in the daily life of the
wonder-woman. Perhaps she had tolerated him merely for one picture.
Perhaps he was especially good in shipwrecks.

If Merton Gill were in this company he would surely have words with this
person, director or no director. He hastily wrote a one-reel scenario in
which the man so far forgot himself as to speak sharply to the star, and
in which a certain young actor, a new member of the company, resented
the ungentlemanly words by pitching the offender into a convenient pool
and earned even more than gratitude from the starry-eyed wonder-woman.

The objectionable man continued active, profuse of gesture and
loud through the megaphone. Once more the storm. The boat rocked
threateningly, the wind roared through its slack rigging, and giant
billows swept the frail craft. Light as from a half-clouded moon broke
through the mist that issued from a steam pipe. There was another lull,
and the Semitic type on the platform became increasingly offensive.
Merton saw himself saying, "Allow me, Miss Baxter, to relieve you of
the presence of this bounder." The man was impossible. Constantly he had
searched the scene for his heroine. She would probably not appear until
they were ready to shoot, and this seemed not to be at once if the