an up and
cut him short.

"Hurry up, sir. Boat's waiting," and before he was aware of it Captain
Rannie, with one of his shins barked in getting aboard, was halfway
across the gulf.

"Now," said Mr. Spokesly to himself, looking towards the houses. "I
wonder what's going to happen."

CHAPTER XII

At first it seemed as if nothing would ever happen again. There were no
electric lights on the _Kalkis_, although she had a very fine dynamo in
her engine-room, because one of her engineers in time past had cut away
all the wiring and sold it. The donkey-boiler fire was banked and the
donkey man gone ashore. She swung at anchor in absolute silence. The
launch was half a mile away. Over the Vardar valley was a glare as of
distant conflagrations, and along the front shore the sparkling
entrances of the palaces of pleasure from which Mr. Spokesly had just
come.

He went down and unlocked the door of his cabin. It was much cleaner
than it had been for years, but smelled of new paint. He opened the
scuttles, hooked back the door, and lit the brass gimbal-lamp. His tin
trunk was stowed under the bed-place. Clean fresh canvas was on the
floor and a rag mat by the bunk. A piece of lilac-tinted toilet soap,
which is almost indispensable in an English guest room. A clean towel,
which he had bought himself at Stein's. The next room was a bathroom,
but it was not yet in an entirely satisfactory condition. It had been
used to keep chickens in at some time and had also served as a store for
the steward. And fresh water had to be carried from the pump, as all the
plumbing had been cut away and sold.

Well, it would do. Mr. Spokesly opened the trunk and began to lay the
contents in different drawers. He did it clumsily, as a matter of
course, so that things of silk and cotton were crumpled and twisted, and
he regarded his results dubiously. He decided he would be a failure as a
lady's maid, and lighting a cigarette ascended to the deck. A fine
thing, he reflected, if she never came and he had all those fal-lals and
frills to carry about the ocean!

There seemed to be no one on board. And it suddenly occurred to him that
this might be an actual fact. He looked into the galley and found no one
there. He walked forward to the bridge-deck rail and blew his whistle.
Presently up from below, and framed in the doorway of the scuttle,
appeared an alarming phenomenon. Its hair stood in conflicting
directions, a large moustache cut acro