t that--'way
back in the country--even the dates. The _Ambassadress_ beat the
_Chevalier_, the Autocrat beat the _Ambassadress_, the _Empress_ beat
the _Autocrat_, the _Regent_ beat the _Empress_, te tum, te tum, te tum!
Didn't the _Quakeress_ ever burn up, after all?"

"Ramsey----"

"Oh, well! this forever sitting silent! I----!"

"Ramsey!----"

X

PERIL

Ramsey clutched the old man's arm, pressed curls and brow against it,
and laughed in a rillet of pure silver.

Hugh bore it, sitting silent, while the great boat, so humanly alive and
aglow in every part, ceaselessly breathed above and quivered below, and
the ruffling breeze as ceaselessly confirmed her unflagging speed. The
mere "catalogue of the ships" had lighted in him a secret glow that
persisted. In his roused imagination the long pageant of the rival
steamers still moved on through the rudely thronging, ever-multiplying
fleet of the boundless valley's yearly swelling commerce, ocean-distant
from all disparaging contrasts of riper empires; moved, yeasting,
ruffling, through forty years of a civilization's genesis, each new
boat, Hayle or Courteney, more beautifully capable than her newest
senior, and each, in her time and degree, as cloud-white by day, as
luminous by night, and as rife with human purpose and human hazards as
this incomparable _Votaress_.

The girl's mirth faded. From behind the four a quiet tread drew near.
From another quarter came two other steps, lighter yet more assertive.
The one was John Courteney's; the two, that halted farther away, meant
again the twins.

"Well, captain?" mildly said the grandfather.

"Well, commodore?" said the captain, declining his son's chair.

"Oh, good!" cried Ramsey, and rose with her nurse. "I didn't know
anybody but my father was called commodore!"

"Yes," replied the captain, "my father too."

"Where've you been?" asked the fearless girl.

His answer was mainly to her mother: "I've been making myself acquainted
in the ladies' cabin. This is no Hudson River boat, you know--whole trip
in a day's jaunt."

"Ah, 'tis a voyage!" said madame.

"So it's well to know one's people," added he. He looked up into the
night. "What a sky! Miss Ramsey, did you ever see, through a glass, the
Golden Locks of Berenice?"

"The gold--" she began eagerly--"no-o! What are the golden--?" But there
she checked, fell upon old Joy, and laughed whimperingly, "That's a dig
at my red hair!"

One of the t