nt aboard feeling that he'd like to rip the
idiotic things down; but the yacht, at least, offered a place where he
could think. The sunset light on the water blazed vermilion--just the
color that Jim all at once discovered he hated. He looked down the
companionway, but finally he decided to stretch out on deck for a few
minutes' rest. He was very tired.

Off in the stern was a vague mass which proved to be a few yards of
canvas carefully tented on the floor. Some gimcrack belonging to the
ship's ornamentation had been freshly gilded and left to dry, protected
by an old sail-cloth. This, weighted down by a rusty marlinespike,
spread couchwise along the taffrail, and offered to Jim just the bed he
longed for.

He lay down, face to the sky, and gave himself up to thoughts that were
very dark indeed. He had been thrown down, unexpectedly and quite
hard, and that was all there was to it. Agatha, lovely but
inexplicable maid, was not for him. She had been deceptive--yes, that
was the word; and he had been a fool--that was the plain truth. He
might as well face it at once. He had been idiot enough to think he
might win the girl. Just because they had been tossed together in
mid-ocean and she had clung to him. The world wasn't an ocean; it was
a spiritual stock-exchange, where he who would win must bid very high
indeed for the prizes of life. And he had so little to bid!

Communing thus with his unhappiness, Jim utterly lost the sense of
time. The shameless vermilion sunset went into second mourning and
thence to nun's gray, before the figure on the sail-cloth moved. Then,
through senses only half awake, Jim heard a light sound, like a
scratch-scratch on the hull of the yacht. Chamberlain, no doubt, just
rubbing the nose of his tender against the _Sea Gull_. Jim was in no
hurry to see Chamberlain, and remained where he was. The Englishman
would heave in sight soon enough.

But though Jim waited several minutes, with half an eye cocked on the
stairway, nobody appeared. The wind was still, the sea like glass; not
a sound anywhere. Struck by something of strangeness in the uncanny
silence, Jim sat up and called "Ahoy, Chamberlain!" There was no
answer. But in the tense stillness there was a sound, and it came from
below--the sound of a man's stealthy tread.

Jim sprang to his feet and made the companionway at a bound. He
listened an instant to make sure that he heard true, cleared the steps,
and landed