e of weather. Wet as was their hair, it was plainly a colourless,
sandy hair. Yet their eyes were dark--and yet not dark. They were
neither blue, nor gray, nor green, nor hazel. Nor were they black. They
were topaz, pale topaz; and they gleamed and dreamed like the eyes of
great cats. They regarded us like walkers in a dream, these pale-haired
storm-waifs with pale, topaz eyes. They did not bow, they did not smile,
in no way did they recognize our presence save that they looked at us and
dreamed.

But Andy Fay greeted us.

"It's a hell of a night an' not a wink of sleep with these goings-on," he
said.

"Now where did they blow in from a night like this?" Mulligan Jacobs
complained.

"You've got a tongue in your mouth," Mr. Pike snarled. "Why ain't you
asked 'em?"

"As though you didn't know I could use the tongue in me mouth, you old
stiff," Jacobs snarled back.

But it was no time for their private feud. Mr. Pike turned on the
dreaming new-comers and addressed them in the mangled and aborted phrases
of a dozen languages such as the world-wandering Anglo-Saxon has had
every opportunity to learn but is too stubborn-brained and wilful-mouthed
to wrap his tongue about.

The visitors made no reply. They did not even shake their heads. Their
faces remained peculiarly relaxed and placid, incurious and pleasant,
while in their eyes floated profounder dreams. Yet they were human. The
blood of their injuries stained them and clotted on their clothes.

"Dutchmen," snorted Mr. Pike, with all due contempt for other breeds, as
he waved them to make themselves at home in any of the bunks.

Mr. Pike's ethnology is narrow. Outside his own race he is aware of only
three races: niggers, Dutchmen, and Dagoes.

Again our visitors proved themselves human. They understood the mate's
invitation, and, glancing first at one another, they climbed into three
top-bunks and closed their eyes. I could swear the first of them was
asleep in half a minute.

"We'll have to clean up for'ard, or we'll be having the sticks about our
ears," the mate said, already starting to depart. "Get the men along,
Mr. Mellaire, and call out the carpenter."

CHAPTER XXXVI

And no westing! We have been swept back three degrees of casting since
the night our visitors came on board. They are the great mystery, these
three men of the sea. "Horn Gypsies," Margaret calls them; and Mr. Pike
dubs them "Dutchmen." One thing is certai