Then, "Did you ever hear them whistle for a
wind?" he asked.

"No. What is it like?"

"When Adams does it, it's like this." He put on a furtive look,
and glanced once or twice at her askance. "Well!" he said with the
reproduction of a strong nasal, "of course I don't believe there's
anything in it. Of course it's all foolishness. Now you must urge me a
little," he added, in his own manner.

"Oh, by all means go on, Mr. Adams," she cried, with a laugh.

He rolled his head again to one side sheepishly.

"Well, I don't presume it DOES have anything to do with the wind--well,
I don't PRESUME it does." He was silent long enough to whet an imagined
expectation; then he set his face towards the sky, and began a soft,
low, coaxing sibilation between his teeth. "S-s-s-s; s-s-s-s-s-s! Well,
it don't stand to reason it can bring the wind--S-s-s-s-s-s-s; s-s-s-s.
Why, of course it 's all foolishness. S-s-s-s." He continued to emit
these sibilants, interspersing them with Adams's protests. Suddenly the
sail pulled the loose sheet taut and the boat leaped forward over the
water.

"Wonderful!" cried the girl.

"That's what I said to Adams, or words to that effect. But I thought we
should get it from the look of the sky before I proposed to whistle for
it. Now, then," he continued, "I will be serious, if you like."

"Serious?"

"Yes. Didn't you ask me to be serious just before those seals
interrupted you?"

"Oh!" she exclaimed, coloring a little. "I don't think we can go back
to that, now." He did not insist, and she said presently, "I thought the
sailors had a superstition about ships that are lucky and unlucky. But
you've kept your boat."

"I kept her for luck: the lightning never strikes twice in the same
place. And I never saw a boat that behaved so well."

"Do you call it behaving well to tip over?"

"She behaved well before that. She didn't tip over outside the reef"

"It certainly goes very smoothly," said the girl. She had in vain
recurred to the tragic motive of her coming; she could not revive it;
there had been nothing like expiation in this eventless voyage; it had
been a pleasure and no penance. She abandoned herself with a weak luxury
to the respite from suffering and anxiety; she made herself the good
comrade of the young man whom perhaps she even tempted to flatter her
farther and farther out of the dreariness in which she had dwelt; and if
any woful current of feeling swept beneath, she would not fath