nodded gaily.

Blythe was fortunately able to secure his sailing master, Mott, and one
of the crew that had sailed with him before, a man named Williams. The
Englishman's valet, Morgan, went as steward. For the rest, we had to be
content with such men as we could get hurriedly together.

Two brothers named Fleming were secured as engineers, a little cockney
as fat as a prize pig for cook. He answered to the cognomen of 'Arry
'Iggins, though on the ship's register the letter H was the first
initial of both his names. Caine, the boatswain, was a sinister-looking
fellow, but he knew his business. Taken as a whole, the crew appeared to
average well enough.

From long practice Blythe was an adept at outfitting a yacht for a
cruise. Without going into details I'll only say that we carried very
little that was superfluous and lacked nothing that would tend to
increase our comfort.

I am no sailor, but it did not take a professional eye to see that the
_Argos_ was a jewel of a boat. Of her seagoing qualities I knew nothing
except by repute, but her equipment throughout was of the best. She was
a three-masted schooner with two funnels, fitted with turbines and
Yarrow boilers. To get eighteen knots out of her was easy, and I have
seen her do twenty in a brisk wind.

In addition to her main deck the _Argos_ carried a topgallant forecastle
and a bridge, the latter extended on stanchions from the main deck to
the sides of the ship so as to give plenty of space for games or
promenades. The bridge contained a reception and a tea room, which were
connected by a carved stairway with the deck below.

The rooms of the commander, the cook, and other servants lay well
forward under the bridge. Abaft of these were the kitchen and the
pantry, the dining room, the saloon, and the rooms of the owner and his
guests.

The conventional phrase "a floating palace" will do well enough to
describe the interior of this turbine yacht. No reasonable man could
have asked more of luxury than was to be found in the well-designed bath
rooms, in the padded library with its shelves of books, its piano and
music rack, and in the smoking room arranged to satisfy the demands of
the most fastidious.

I had resigned my place with Kester & Wilcox to help push the
preparation for our departure, but I was still spending a good deal of
my time in the office cleaning up some matters upon which I had been
working. Much of the time I was down at the docks, and