after the events last chronicled, the steam
yacht _Streak_ was two days out on the Atlantic, with a goodly party on
board. There were three ladies--the Duke's sister, the Countess, and
Miss Skeat, the latter looking very nautical in blue serge, which sat
tightly over her, like the canvas cover sewn round a bicycle when it is
sent by rail. Of men there were also three--to wit, the owner of the
yacht, Mr. Barker, and Dr. Claudius.

The sea has many kinds of fish. Some swim on their sides, some swim
straight, some come up to take a sniff of air, and some stay below. It
is just the same with people who go to sea. Take half a dozen
individuals who are all more or less used to the water, and they will
behave in half a dozen different ways. One will become encrusted to the
deck like a barnacle, another will sit in the cabin playing cards; a
third will spend his time spinning yarns with the ship's company, and a
fourth will rush madly up and down the deck from morning till night in
the pursuit of an appetite which shall leave no feat of marine digestion
untried or unaccomplished. Are they not all stamped on the memory of
them that go down to the sea in yachts? The little card-box and the
scoring-book of the players, the deck chair and rugs of the inveterate
reader, the hurried tread and irascible eye of the carnivorous
passenger, and the everlasting pipe of the ocean talker, who feels time
before him and the world at his feet wherein to spin yarns--has any one
not seen them?

Now, the elements on board of the _Streak_ were sufficiently diverse to
form a successful party, and by the time they were two days out on the
long swell, with a gentle breeze just filling the trysails, and
everything stowed, they had each fallen into the groove of sea life that
was natural to him or to her. There were Barker and the Duke in the
pretty smoking-room forward with the windows open and a pack of cards
between them. Every now and then they stopped to chat a little, or the
Duke would go out and look at the course, and make his rounds to see
that every one was all right and nobody sea-sick. But Barker rarely
moved, save to turn his chair and cross one leg over the other, whereby
he might the more easily contemplate his little patent leather shoes and
stroke his bony hands over his silk-clad ankles; for Mr. Barker
considered sea-dressing, as he called it, a piece of affectation, and
arrayed himself on board ship precisely as he did on land. The