e rapidly away, wide-eyed
and ill at ease.... With suppressed excitement and the tail of my eye, I
watched him bear down upon one of the stumbling-blocks to which Berry
had referred. The accuracy with which he approached it was almost
uncanny. I found myself standing upon one leg.... The screech of anguish
with which he hailed the collision, no less than the precipitancy with
which he dropped the guitar, sat down and began to rock himself to and
fro, was irresistibly gratifying.

The muscles about Berry's mouth twitched.

"So perish all traitors," he said. "And now I don't know how you feel,
but I've had about enough of this. My nerves aren't what they were.
Something may snap any minute."

With one accord we proceeded to rejoin Jill, who had been witnessing our
humiliations from a safe distance, and was dabbing her grey eyes with a
ridiculous handkerchief.

As we came up, she started forward and pointed a trembling finger in the
direction of the boat. Berry and I swung on our heels.

Looking very well, Jonah was descending the gangway with a bored air.

My brother-in-law and I stared at him as at one risen from the dead.
Almost at once he saw us and waved airily.... A moment later he limped
to where we were standing and kissed his sister.

"I had an idea some of you'd turn up," he said coolly.

Berry turned to me.

"You hear?" he said grimly. "He had an idea some of us'd turn up. An
idea ... I suppose a little bird told him. Oh, take me away, somebody,
and let me die. Let me have one last imitation meal, and die. Where do
they sell wild oats?"

Jonah disregarded the interruption.

"At the last moment," he said calmly, "I felt there might be some
mix-up, so I came along too." He turned and nodded at a nervous little
man who was standing self-consciously a few paces away and, as I now
observed for the first time, carrying my cousin's dressing-case. "That,"
he added, "is Camille."

His momentous announcement rendered us speechless. At length--

"You--you mean to say," I gasped, "that--that it's a man?"

Jonah shrugged his shoulders.

"Look at his trousers," he said.

"But--but of course we expected a woman," cried Jill in a choking voice.
"We can't have a _chef_."

"Nothing," said Jonah, "was said about sex."

Berry spoke in a voice shaken with emotion.

"A man," he said. "A he-cook, called 'Camille.' And it actually occurred
to you that 'there might be some mix-up.' You know, your intuition is
po