if he had been cut loose from all
old conditions and were sailing between skies to some unknown
planet. This was not only because of the strange waters rushing
underfoot but because of the flowering and singing of something
within him that made the world into which he was sailing an alien
place, heavenly desirable. A week ago that day _The Aloha_ had
weighed anchor, and these seven days, in fairly fortunate weather,
her white nose had been cleaving seas to traverse which had so long
been her owner's dream; and yet her owner, in pleasant apostasy, had
turned his back upon the whole matter of what he had been used to
dream, and now ungratefully spent his time in trying to count the
hours to his journey's end.

Somewhere out yonder, he reflected, as he leaned on the rail, this
southern moonlight was flooding whatever scene _she_ looked on; the
lapping of the same sea was in her ears; and his future and hers
might be dependent upon those two perplexed tan-coloured greyhounds
below. By which one would have said that matters had been going
briskly forward with St. George since the morning that he had
breakfasted with Olivia Holland.

Exactly when the end of the journey would be was not evident either
to him or to the two strange creatures who proposed to be his
guides. Or rather to Jarvo, who was still the spokesman; lean
little Akko, although his intelligence was unrivaled, being content
with monosyllables for stepping-stones while the stream of Jarvo's
soft speech flowed about him. Barnay, the captain, frankly
distrusted them both, and confided to St. George that "them two
little jool-eyed scuts was limbs av the old gint himself, and they
reminded him, Barnay, of a pair of haythen naygurs," than which he
could say no more. But then, Barnay's wholesale skepticism was his
only recreation, save talking about his pretty daughter "of school
age," and he liked to stand tucking his beard inside his collar and
indulging in both. In truth, Barnay, who knew the waters of the
Atlantic fairly well, was sorely tried to take orders from the two
little brown strangers who, he averred, consulted a "haythen
apparaytus" which they would cheerfully let him see but of which he
could "make no more than av the spach av a fish," and then directed
him to take courses which lay far outside the beaten tracks of the
high seas.

St. George, who had had several talks with them, was puzzled and
doubtful, and more than once confided to himself that