rry! Larry O'Keefe, where are you now with your leprechauns and
banshee, your heart of a child, your laughing blue eyes, and your
fearless soul? Shall I ever see you again, Larry O'Keefe, dear to me
as some best beloved younger brother? Larry!

CHAPTER VII

Larry O'Keefe

Pressing back the questions I longed to ask, I introduced myself.
Oddly enough, I found that he knew me, or rather my work. He had
bought, it appeared, my volume upon the peculiar vegetation whose
habitat is disintegrating lava rock and volcanic ash, that I had
entitled, somewhat loosely, I could now perceive, Flora of the
Craters. For he explained naively that he had picked it up, thinking
it an entirely different sort of a book, a novel in fact--something
like Meredith's Diana of the Crossways, which he liked greatly.

He had hardly finished this explanation when we touched the side of
the Suwarna, and I was forced to curb my curiosity until we reached
the deck.

"That thing you saw me sitting on," he said, after he had thanked the
bowing little skipper for his rescue, "was all that was left of one of
his Majesty's best little hydroairplanes after that cyclone threw it
off as excess baggage. And by the way, about where are we?"

Da Costa gave him our approximate position from the noon reckoning.

O'Keefe whistled. "A good three hundred miles from where I left the
H.M.S. Dolphin about four hours ago," he said. "That squall I rode in
on was some whizzer!

"The Dolphin," he went on, calmly divesting himself of his soaked
uniform, "was on her way to Melbourne. I'd been yearning for a joy
ride and went up for an alleged scouting trip. Then that blow shot out
of nowhere, picked me up, and insisted that I go with it.

"About an hour ago I thought I saw a chance to zoom up and out of it,
I turned, and _blick_ went my right wing, and down I dropped."

"I don't know how we can notify your ship, Lieutenant O'Keefe," I
said. "We have no wireless."

"Doctair Goodwin," said Da Costa, "we could change our course,
sair--perhaps--"

"Thanks--but not a bit of it," broke in O'Keefe. "Lord alone knows
where the Dolphin is now. Fancy she'll be nosing around looking for
me. Anyway, she's just as apt to run into you as you into her. Maybe
we'll strike something with a wireless, and I'll trouble you to put me
aboard." He hesitated. "Where are you bound, by the way?" he asked.

"For Ponape," I answered.

"No wireless there," mused O'Keefe. "Beastly