rocks down on the Turkish Empire."

Hope and Clay passed on up the deck laughing, and MacWilliams looked
after them with a fond and paternal smile. The lamp in the wheelhouse
threw a broad belt of light across the forward deck as they passed
through it into the darkness of the bow, where the lonely lookout
turned and stared at them suspiciously, and then resumed his stern
watch over the great waters.

They leaned upon the rail and breathed the soft air which the rush of
the steamer threw in their faces, and studied in silence the stars that
lay so low upon the horizon line that they looked like the harbor
lights of a great city.

"Do you see that long line of lamps off our port bow?" asked Clay.

Hope nodded.

"Those are the electric lights along the ocean drive at Long Branch and
up the Rumson Road, and those two stars a little higher up are fixed to
the mast-heads of the Scotland Lightship. And that mass of light that
you think is the Milky Way, is the glare of the New York street lamps
thrown up against the sky."

"Are we so near as that?" said Hope, smiling. "And what lies over
there?" she asked, pointing to the east.

"Over there is the coast of Africa. Don't you see the lighthouse on
Cape Bon? If it wasn't for Gibraltar being in the way, I could show
you the harbor lights of Bizerta, and the terraces of Algiers shining
like a cafe chantant in the night."

"Algiers," sighed Hope, "where you were a soldier of Africa, and rode
across the deserts. Will you take me there?"

"There, of course, but to Gibraltar first, where we will drive along
the Alameda by moonlight. I drove there once coming home from a mess
dinner with the Colonel. The drive lies between broad white
balustrades, and the moon shone down on us between the leaves of the
Spanish bayonet. It was like an Italian garden. But he did not see
it, and he would talk to me about the Watkins range finder on the lower
ramparts, and he puffed on a huge cigar. I tried to imagine I was
there on my honeymoon, but the end of his cigar would light up and I
would see his white mustache and the glow on his red jacket, so I vowed
I would go over that drive again with the proper person. And we won't
talk of range finders, will we?

"There to the North is Paris; your Paris, and my Paris, with London
only eight hours away. If you look very closely, you can see the
thousands of hansom cab lamps flashing across the asphalt, and the open
theatres, and th