eve before setting it down.

While Condy was interviewing the old fellow, Travis was examining, with
the interest of a child, the details of the cabin: the rack-like bunk,
the washstand, ingeniously constructed so as to shut into the bulkhead
when not in use, the alarm-clock screwed to the wall, and the array of
photographs thrust into the mirror between frame and glass. One, an
old daguerreotype, particularly caught her fancy. It was the portrait
of a very beautiful girl, wearing the old-fashioned side curls and high
comb of a half-century previous. The old mate noticed the attention
she paid to it, and, as soon as he had done giving information to
Condy, turned and nodded to Travis, and said quietly: "She was pretty,
wasn't she?"

"Oh, very!" answered Travis, without looking away.

There was a silence. Then the mate, his eyes wide and thoughtful, said
with a long breath:

"And she was just about your age, miss, when I saw her; and you favor
her, too."

Condy and Travis held their breaths in attention. There in the cabin
of that curious nondescript whaleback they had come suddenly to the
edge of a romance--a romance that had been lived through before they
were born. Then Travis said in a low voice, and sweetly:

"She died?"

"Before I ever set eyes on her, miss. That is, MAYBE she died. I
sometimes think--fact is, I really believe she's alive yet, and waiting
for me." He hesitated awkwardly. "I dunno," he said pulling his beard.
"I don't usually tell that story to strange folk, but you remind me so
of her that I guess I will."

Condy sat down on the edge of the bunk, and the mate seated himself on
the plush settle opposite the door, his elbows on his knees, his eyes
fixed on a patch of bright sunlight upon the deck outside.

"I began life," he said, "as a deep-sea diver--began pretty young, too.
I first put on the armor when I was twenty, nothing but a lad; but I
could take the pressure up to seventy pounds even then. One of my very
first dives was off Trincomalee, on the coast of Ceylon. A mail packet
had gone down in a squall with all on board. Six of the bodies had
come up and had been recovered, but the seventh hadn't. It was the
body of the daughter of the governor of the island, a beautiful young
girl of nineteen, whom everybody loved. I was sent for to go down and
bring the body up. Well, I went down. The packet lay in a hundred
feet of water, and that's a wonder deep dive. I had to g